A sad day for salamanders

I consider myself lucky to be able to own one of my favorite animals as a pet. While some people pine after owning a panda or giraffe, I have two axolotls of my own that I get to… well, I can't really play with them, but I can pet them and let them nibble on my hands and otherwise interact with them on a fairly frequent basis. Most of the time I forget that they're technically wild animals because of the huge network of captive axolotl owners and breeders.

This is why I was surprised to see this article from the Telegraph saying axolotls may have gone extinct in the wild. They're pretty common in captivity, and I knew they were endangered in the wild because of limited habitat in the lakes around Mexico City, but I didn't realize their situation had become this dire. Studies from the Mexico Academy of Sciences showed a huge decline from 6000 axolotls per square kilometer in 1998 to 100 per square kilometer in 2008.

Self-generated graph from the article data. This is pretty scary.

Technically the extinction hasn't been confirmed yet, as researchers will begin a survey in February to see if they can find more, but the winter is prime breeding season (as I found out the hard way), so they'll have to act quickly so they can find these animals while it's still cold. Makeshift axolotl shelters have also been constructed in Lake Xochimilco with plants, rocks, and clean water to protect the animals from invasive carp and low water quality.

The joke in my circles is that my two kept breeding because they had to rebuild the population, but having brother and sister as the replenishing pair would be horrible genetics, so I think the researchers should stick to finding the wild ones.