In the meantime, we have come very close to achieving these goals for the first species. For the Vietnamese crocodile newt, for example, we already have enough animals in our program thanks to good breeding success. Now we only need four more keepers to reach the required number of 30. This should still be possible this year. After that we can focus our efforts on the second species of the genus in our program: Ziegler’s crocodile newt.

The situation is similar for the Mangarahara cichlid, one of the rarest fish in the world, which may have already been extirpated in the wild. According to our calculations, to keep this species stable over 40 years, we need 16 husbandries with a total of 192 animals – 12 husbandries are already in place, and here too good breeding successes have ensured sufficient individuals. First successes with our two other species of Malagasy cichlids let us look optimistically into the future also for them.

However, “target number reached” does not mean that we can sit back with satisfaction. For some species, we have initially only been able to draw on an extremely narrow genetic range in the initial animals – sometimes only on the offspring of individual pairs or siblings. Here, we hope to be able to obtain more foundation animals in the long term. In any case, the necessary infrastructure for long-term conservation breeding is already in place, in accordance with our guiding principle: build capacity.

We are also preparing to add a number of other amphibian, fish and, for the first time, reptile species. At the next balance at the end of November some new names will already be found on our species table – be curious!