There are lots of endangered and threatened species among the goodeids and quite a few of them are very easy to breed and maintain. I personally have several types in my tanks and picked some up recently at the American Livebearers Association annual convention. There seems to be no restriction on obtaining them except the restrictions that you put onto yourself. I refused to bring home the Skiffia francesae that were available because I don't have the confidence in my own skills to maintain them and breed them. On the other hand, fish like the Ameca splendens, a very easy to care for fish, is extinct in the wild through no fault of its own. When you take a river and divert all of the water to agriculture, the fish that have no other home are doomed unless people like you and me take over and give them a home in our tanks. A fair number of the goodeid group have that much in common, they live naturally in places where the habitat is being destroyed by man's activities and only the efforts of dedicated fish keepers is preventing them becoming extinct. Those Skiffias that I left behind for more experienced breeders have all of 2 successful breeders in the entire US but one of those breeders was eager to share his stock so that a power cut at his home would not end up killing half of the population of them. They have been extinct in the wild for quite some time and are not too easy to care for mainly because they need to be kept in cold water most of the time. Xiphophorus couchianus is another easy fish that just ran out of natural places to live. They were the subject of the species maintenance program of the ALA a couple of years ago and are now available in people's tanks in significant numbers.
For Mixmaster Jay, there are no permits or special qualification certificates needed to keep these fish and I am eager to provide them a home to prosper and thrive in. I am like most people with that kind of interest and do my homework before I bring home any endangered fish. There would be no point to bringing home a threatened or endangered fish just to let it die in my tanks. It could do that just fine in its lost habitat. The real challenge with these fish is finding an ecosystem where they can live on their own, otherwise the day will come when nobody has them anymore and it will be too late. The X couchianus and the Skiffia francesae are both examples of plain fish with no particularly beautiful colors, patterns or shapes so finding someone who wants them can be a problem in itself. Only those experienced breeders with a desire to preserve a species would even consider them. Please don't do anything to discourage that interest, it is rare enough n the hobby already.
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