Michael Köck European tour update 4: Stuttgart, Germany – Caen, France

On 23 September 23, I took an early train from Stuttgart to Karlsruhe Zoo, Germany. I was welcomed by Matthias Reinschmidt, the zoo’s director, who is passionate about birds, especially parrots. We spent the first hour talking about his breeding successes with rare parrot species, and then visited the aquarium, where he showed us a group of Ataeniobius toweri, a Goodeid species from San Luis Potosí, which the zoo keeps. He showed interest in Plan G and promised me that he would organise an exhibition for Goodeids and support the conservation plan financially once it had been set up.

After Karlsruhe, I travelled to Pforzheim to fulfil a promise: Weeks earlier, I had met a retired teacher who had spent several years in Mexico as a paleontologist and now dedicates himself to teaching science  to young people. One project was about the territorial behaviour, use of space and reproduction of Xenotoca doadrioi. I offered him the opportunity to talk to the children about Plan G and the species they keep, and he was very enthusiastic. Even the press was present and ‘Dino’, as he is called by his friends, organised a nice event. He also promised to support Plan G by organising a charity event by the end of the year to raise money. A big man with a big heart!

The following day I headed to Zurich, Switzerland. Holger Kraus, the curator in charge, welcomed me and gave me a tour of the zoo. There are some wonderful projects happening and lots of funding has been invested by donors. He has a great passion for fish and praised Plan G as ‘the blueprint for the One Plan approach’. Unfortunately, Zurich Zoo limits its financial support to only seven ongoing projects, without the possibility of adding another one or incorporating Plan G into one of them. But he offered me an interesting option: Zurich Zoo has excellent contacts with the Max Planck Institute, and he favours collaboration on a scientific project that is led and paid for by the zoo that involves artificial intelligence. This project would give us the opportunity, for example, to identify fish that we have released into the wild without having to physically tag them beforehand. A huge advantage, because we need nothing more than a high-resolution image of the fish before we start the reintroduction.

I then had to travel back to Stuttgart. Unfortunately, last-minute changes to the timetable made it necessary to travel there and back, but there was no way to change this. I was welcomed by Isabel Koch, the aquarium curator, and Stefanie Reska, the curator for conservation projects. The Wilhelma zoological-botanical garden, the full name of Stuttgart Zoo, has been supporting a Goodeid conservation project run by the Aquatic Biology Laboratory of the university of Morelia for several years, so this visit was essentially to give an account and provide first-hand information. But Plan G was so well received that Isabel and Stefanie decided to increase the amount of funding to support this project and they promised to use their contacts and influence to help increase our chances of funding and help us develop key elements to increase our impact. A very generous offer that I gladly accepted!

On 26 September, I travelled from Zurich to Basel by train. Together with Zurich Zoo, Basel Zoo is one of the two largest zoos in Switzerland. There I met a good old friend of mine, Fabian Schmidt, aquarium curator, and presented Plan G to him, staff from the entire zoo and the director. Plan G was again very well received, and Basel Zoo wants to support the project financially, but will have to wait until the position of conservation project curator is filled again early next year. More information will then be available. In the afternoon, I travelled by TGV train at a speed of more than 200 km per hour / 124 miles per hour to Paris and from there to the vicinity of Fontainebleau in the evening. The curator of L’Aquarium Tropical, Charles-Edouard Fusari, had invited me to spend the night with him and to travel to Paris with him the next morning to talk about Plan G.

In the morning of 27 September, Charles-Edouard and I visited L’Aquarium Tropical. He immediately promised me his support, but as the aquarium does not charge an entrance fee, he can only donate small amounts, he said between EUR 1,000 and 3,000 per year. I was happy to agree. Every coin counts, and any support is very welcome. I also gave him information about Plan G for Alexis Lecu from the Parc Zoologique de Paris. Alexis wanted to see me to talk about Plan G but was unavailable due to a veterinary congress in Canada. Fortunately, he is also the vet at L’Aquarium Tropical, so I took the opportunity to introduce him to Plan G via Charles-Edouard. In the evening, I took another train to travel to Caen on the coast of the English Channel. The plan for the next day was to take the ferry to Portsmouth in the morning, but the visits to the UK and finally Hungary will be part of the fifth and final travel report. Stay tuned!

Michael Köck European tour update 3: Nuremberg, Germany – Stuttgart, Germany

On 11 September, I took the bus from Leipzig to Nuremberg and arrived at the zoo around noon. Director Dag Encke left an ongoing meeting to say hello and scheduled our meeting an hour later, so I had some time to visit the zoo. Nuremberg is one of only few zoos in Europe that house manatees and even dolphins. Though an hour seems a long time, I didn’t get further than seeing these animals, partly due to a heavy rain shower that rolled in.

The meeting itself was awesome! Plan G was – again – well received and several possibilities of supporting this conservation plan through the zoo were evaluated. We found a possible way to combine Goodeid conservation with the zoo’s work on Ambystoma dumerilii, the Lake Patzcuaro salamander endemic to the Pátzcuaro lake drainage.

We also discussed several support possibilities through the zoo and with organisations associated with zoos, some of which were already approached by me, others scheduled for next year.

I spent the night in Prague and visited Plzeň Zoo on 12 September, which is about one hour west of Prague. This zoo has built a house for endangered fish species, including Goodeids, so it was of course worth a visit. Curator Tomaš Peš picked me up at the train station, brought me to the zoo and showed me the exhibition. I was really impressed to see threatened fish from all continents in one room, but even more impressed that the zoo drew attention to the cooperation between hobbyists and zoos – an important relationship in conservation that I have been talking about for years.

After lunch with Tomaš, director Jiří Trávníček and his son – both of them experts in Mexican reptiles, especially rattle snakes – I presented Plan G to them and other representatives of the zoo. Already during the presentation, I was offered financial support for Plan G for this and the coming year, so Plzeň Zoo joined the Goodeid conservation alliance!

The next day I proceeded to Zoo Hellabrunn in Munich. Thanks to curator Eric Diener, who became a dear friend on this trip, I was allowed to sleep in the zoo for three nights. The wish in Munich to display Goodeids and contribute to their conservation is high, so we discussed several possible approaches, including linking Goodeid conservation with that of an Ambystoma species. A few days later I received an encouraging email from Eric, saying that Zoo Hellabrunn wants to support Plan G, initially for three years with €5,000 to €10,000 annually, focusing on a reintroduction project or a project related to reforestation.

After enjoying a weekend off in Munich, I visited Zoo Hellbrunn. Though the name sounds very similar to Munich Zoo Hellabrunn, this zoo is located in Salzburg, the Austrian city that many people connect with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Sound of Music. I met Lisa Sernow, the responsible curator and Mario Katzinger, who is responsible for everything related to South and Central America. We talked about Plan G and its dimensions, with the result that the aquarium in the so-called South America house will be changed into a Goodeid tank to create awareness and collect donation from visitors. The zoo is also willing to directly support Plan G.

So, six days, four zoos, one hundred per cent support – what else can be asked for! After another day in Salzburg, due to severe flooding in Austria which had caused all train and bus connections to be canceled, I finally arrived in Vienna to spend a few days with my family and take a well-deserved vacation.

Then on 22 September, I was on the bus again to meet a dear friend in Stuttgart and prepare more meetings for the Monday, starting with the Zoo in Karlsruhe that has its own conservation foundation, the “Artenschutzstiftung”. The meeting there and a few more in Switzerland and France will be part of the Travel Report number four, so stay tuned!

Michael Köck European tour update 2: Rostock – Nuremberg, Germany

On 5 September I introduced Plan G to Rostock Zoo curator Jens Bohn and some of his colleagues. Our conservation idea was well received, the zoo wants to support Plan G and build up a Goodeid tank to promote Goodeid conservation.

In the afternoon, I had a meeting with Tim Schikora, the director of Schwerin Zoo. Although in previous correspondence with the zoo, they weren’t initially on board with participating in a freshwater fish conservation project, this changed during the meeting and the final outcome was similar to Rostock: an aquarium with Goodeids should tell the stories of threat, extinction, recovery and reintroduction, and the will to support Plan G financially was also shown. A really successful day!

I headed to Berlin on Friday 6 September. A meeting in the zoo’s aquarium was unexpectedly postponed, but this wasn’t a big problem as I planned to stay a few days in Berlin. The following day I presented Plan G to the local association of aquarists. A big success: further cooperation possibilities were discussed and Uwe Abraham, chair of the “1000-Arten-Projekt” and host of the event showed big interest in running a large Goodeid breeding facility in cooperation with the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA), simply by increasing the capacity of aquariums of their member zoos. Future talks will happen to see how this could be achieved.

After a touristic Sunday in Berlin, I met Tobias Kohl from Stiftung Artenschutz – a foundation that supports conservation projects globally  – on Monday the 9^th. I already sent an application to them weeks ago, so the visit was mostly to clarify questions about our application.

Directly after, I met Markus Klamt, curator of the Berlin Aquarium to make up for my postponed meeting from 6 September. As he spent several years in Vienna, my hometown, we had a lots to talk besides Plan G, but also our conservation project was discussed widely. I reached Leipzig later that day and slept in an apartment in the zoo.

On 10 September, I headed to the Bergzoo Halle/Saale, which is just 30 min away from Leipzig. The meeting with the director, Dennis Müller, and members of his team was great. He directly promised Plan G €5,000 annually for 2024 and for 2025, of course also in combination with an aquarium presenting Goodeids to the public.

In the afternoon, I met Ariel Jacken, the responsible curator of Leipzig Zoo, his curator colleague Till Rahm and members of the conservation team. Plan G was well received and I had to answer an hour of questions. After all, Leipzig has a very complex conservation strategy, which means that Plan G, which really caught their interest, needs to fit in the frame of this strategy. However, they want to support our plan, so Leipzig Zoo is eagerly looking for this possibility. Let’s cross fingers and wait for the next part of the trip, starting with Nuremberg Zoo in Germany.

Stay tuned!

Michael Köck European tour update 1: Mexico City – Rostock, Germany

Michael Köck, Chair of Plan G: the initiative to save the highly threatened Goodeinae family of Splitfins in Mexico, is currently touring zoos, public aquaria and museums across Europe with the aim of engaging stakeholders in Plan G’s conservation plan. Here, he gives his first update on the trip.
Leaving Mexico on 27 August, I arrived the following day in Copenhagen, Denmark. Next day I took a connecting flight to Sandefjord, about 20 km west of Oslo, Norway. I got picked up by a friend who brought me to his farm in Porsgrunn where I spent two days acclimatising. He is a hobby fishkeeper who has been to Mexico a few times, so we spent those days talking a lot about fish, Mexico and Plan G.

Two more friends visited us and we created some really nice ideas around Plan G. For example, one of these guys works with several friends in a company that plans ecological and sustainably functioning cities and towns, and they would be very interested to work with Teuchitlán [the town where the Golden Skiffia was successfully reintroduced] on a pro bono basis. He wants to convince his partners to support Plan G financially.

On 31 August, we all went by car to Fiskebäckskil, Sweden where I gave a talk at the 50-year anniversary of the hobbyist organisation Poecilia Scandinavia about Plan G. More than 20 people from five countries joined the meeting and the talk was well received. Directly after, Poecilia Scandinavia donated €3,000 to Plan G and another €1,500 to the Aqualab in Morelia and asked me to write an article about Plan G for one of the next issues of their magazine.

I headed to Malmö on 2  September, where I had a meeting with the leader of the Aquarium of the Malmö Museum, Jesper Flygare in the morning and gave a presentation about Plan G to him and the staff. The people were impressed by our conservation work and promised to help. The museum is run by the town of Malmö and the concept doesn’t allow any straight donations, but we agreed on making an exhibition with Goodeids and a donation function for visitors, as well as promoting Plan G to the local fish club. The aquarium already keeps two species of Goodeid and even runs an ex situ conservation project for one of them, so there is already a strong connection. My presentation was followed by the head animal keeper of the Tropikariet Indoor Zoo in Helsingborg, Jonas Östander, who got invited to my presentation by the Malmö Museum team. He invited me to present Plan G to his director who is interested in supporting new conservation projects. Though my schedule was very tight, I promised to find a time slot for the next day in the late afternoon.

On 3 September, I paid a visit to the Den Blå Planet, Denmark’s biggest public aquarium. The head animal keeper Peter Petersen showed me around and I was impressed not only by the number of rare fish in their show tanks, but also to see huge colonies of several Goodeid species backstage. They have joined the EAZA Goodeid Ex Situ Program (EEP) and are focusing on ex situ conservation of many endangered fish species from many fish groups. I presented Plan G to Peter and he suggested he will present it to the board of directors to select Plan G to get funded by their conservation fund. Luckily, I prepared USB sticks with the Plan G logo in a little bag with Mexican sweets and a pen made of copper – a little gift from Santa Clara del Cobre near Lake Pátzcuaro for all my contacts on the tour. The USB sticks hold information about the “Guardianes del Río Teuchitlán” and SHOAL, as well as my Plan G presentation.

Starting at 14:00, I started for Helsingborg, knowing time would be tight for Tropikariet Zoo, as it closes at 17:00. Unfortunately, a taxi driver brought me to the wrong train station and I arrived 10 min too late. The zoo was informed but unfortunately no one could wait for me. I was however able to leave my little present with the USB stick, and I will for sure contact them after my return to Mexico.

On September 4 I took a ferry transfer from Trelleborg, Sweden to Rostock, Germany, where I have a visit to the local zoo scheduled for 5 September, and one to the zoo in Schwerin in the afternoon. I will let you know how these visits and the ones in Berlin thereafter went.

Stay tuned!