Axolotls are critical endangered. According to Red list of endangered speciesThese water monsters – a national symbol, which contains 50 peso bills in Mexico, which were once considered divine beings, “twins” of Aztec of the deity Quetzalcoatl – are “an extremely high risk of extinction in freedom.”
Numbers say this best. In 1998, their natural environment was 6,000 axolotla per square kilometer, a district Xochimilco in the south of Mexico. Until 2004, this number fell to just 1000, and until 2008 there was only the 100th list of the wild axolotla population in 2014 found only 36 creatures. Now, a decade later, a novel survey is underway. Xochimilco is home to the remains of a expansive channel network built by the Aztecs and is the UNESCO World Heritage Place, although the district faces ecological deterioration as a result of increasing urbanization.
Everything indicates that for axolotle the countdown to extinction continues. But there is the last hope. Scientists from the ecological Laboratory Restoration at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Unam), who are responsible for the Axolotl list, try to reverse this trend and keep one of the oldest land vertebrates on the planet.
“The purpose of the population is to know the current status of the Axolotl population,” says Luis Zambło, project leader and founder of the Ecological Restaurant laboratory. Public observations are crucial, he says, but to be sure of their existence in the wild, there are evidence. Armed with confirmation that the axolotles are still present in Xochimilco, and when estimating the number of researchers, they plan to conduct campaigns to combat disinformation about the species and conduct protection, as well as strengthening the wild population by releasing bred people. The final results of this survey will be published in the first half of 2025, and a novel number is planned for 2026.
Wired was witnessing how scientists Vania Mendoza, Viviam Crespo and Paola Cervantes – with local villagers such as Basilio Rodríguez – gave the census. They used conventional fishing techniques along with novel methods, such as the analysis of the DNA environment, in which the species can be traced, hunting for DNA, which it throws into the surrounding habitat.
The research takes place at dawn in Xochimilco, one of the last traces of the age-old lake system in Mexico, where plant and animal species, which modernity erased from other parts of Mexico. This is a magical oasis in the capital of Monster, which looks like something from a Mexican fairy tale in which herons and pelicans are heard when the sun appears. When we travel through the landscape on a wooden raft, we see that the lake is still filled ChinampasArtificial agricultural islands developed for the first time in pre -Hispanic times and which surprised the first Spaniards who came to these lands.
Axolotl has four legs, a long tail and is night and carnivorous. They appear in four different colors: wild axolotles have a black and brown shade, while mutated variants include leucist (white with obscure eyes), white albinos and golden albino. “We have not found any axolotle so far; however, DNA analysis offers a chance,” says Paola Cervantes, a graduate of Earth Sciences and part of the Unam team in this year’s universal list.