Axolotls are critically endangered. According to the IUCN red list of endangered speciesThese aquatic monsters – a national symbol which appears on the 50 peso invoices of Mexico, and which were once considered as divine entities, the “twins” of the Aztec divinity Quetzalcoatl – are at “extremely high risk of extinction in nature”.
The figures say it best. In 1998, there were 6,000 axolotls per square kilometer in their natural habitat, the district of Xochimilco south of Mexico City. In 2004, this figure fell at only 1,000, and in 2008, it was only 100. A 2014 census of the Wild Axolotl population of Mexico found only 36 of creatures. Now, a decade later, a new investigation is underway. Xochimilco is home to the remains of a large network of channels built by Aztecs, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, although the district is confronted with ecological deterioration following increasing urbanization.
Everything indicates that for Axolotl, the countdown of extinction continues. But there is a last hope. Scientists from the Ecological Restoration Laboratory of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), which are in charge of the Axolotl census, seek to revers this trend and to keep one of the oldest land vertebrates on the planet.
“The objective of the census is to know the current status of the Axolotl population,” explains Luis Zambrano, project manager and founder of the ecological catering laboratory. Public observations are important, he says, but to be sure of their existence in nature, there must be evidence. Armed with confirmation that the axolotles are always present in Xochimilco, and with an estimate of the number, the researchers then predict campaigns to fight against the disinformation on the species and to guide conservation, and also to strengthen the wild population by releasing high individuals. The end results of this survey will be published in the first half of 2025, and a new statement is scheduled for 2026.
Wired saw in the first hand how scientists Vania Mendoza, Viviam Crespo and Paola Cervantes – Together with local villagers, such as Basilio Rodríguez – led the census. They used traditional fishing techniques as well as innovative methods such as environmental DNA analysis, where a species can be traced by DNA hunting it loses in its surrounding habitat.
The judgment takes place in Dawn in Xochimilco, one of the last vestiges of the old lake system in the Mexico basin, where the plant and animal species that modernity have erased other parts of Mexico City. It is a magic oasis in the capital of the monster which looks like something of a Mexican fairy tale, where the herons and the pelicans are heard when the sun rises. While we travel through the landscape on a wooden raft, we see that the lake is always filled with chinampasThe artificial agricultural islands developed for the first time in the prehispanic era and which amazed the first Spaniards who came to these lands.
Axolotl has four legs, a long tail, and is nocturnal and carnivorous. They appear in four different colors: wild axolotles have a blackish brown shade, while the mutant variants include leukist (white with dark eyes), white albinos and golden albinos. “So far, we have not found any axolotls;
