In Search of the Last Wild Axolotls

Using environmental DNA analysis and traditional fishing techniques, researchers are seeking answers about the current population of axolotls in their natural habitat. The numbers are alarming.

axolotls are critically endangered. According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, these aquatic monsters—a national symbol that features on Mexico’s 50 peso bills, and which were once considered divine entities, the “twins” of the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl—are at “extremely high risk of extinction in the wild.”

The figures tell it best. In 1998 there were 6,000 axolotls per square kilometer in their natural habitat, the district of Xochimilco in the south of Mexico City. By 2004, that figure had fallen to just 1,000, and by 2008 it was only 100. A 2014 census of Mexico’s wild axolotl population found only 36 ...