SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
mexico city
Scientists Relaunch Campaign to Save the Endangered Axolotl
The Adoptaxolotl 2024 campaign invites donors to adopt a threatened salamander for around 600 pesos, or $35.
Nov 25, 2023
Ecologists in Mexico relaunched a campaign Thursday to protect the axolotl, an iconic Mexican underwater salamander threatened with extinction.
The Adoptaxolotl 2024 campaign invites donors to adopt a threatened salamander for around 600 pesos, or $35, The Associated Press reported. A virtual adoption comes with regular updates on the amphibian's well-being. Axolotl lovers can also buy one of the salamanders a dinner or purchase axolotl-themed t-shirts, bandannas, and mugs.
"The axolotl is at critical risk of extinction," Luis Zambrano González, who works at the Biology Institute of Mexico's National Autonomous University (UNAM), told the UNAM Gazette. "For this reason we need to understand its conservation as something that all of society is responsible for, to care for its habitat and develop strategies to allow people to relate more to these animals."
"Thanks to these surveys we realized that the amphibian is on the edge of extinction, and if we don't do something we will soon lose it in the wild."
There are 18 different species of axolotls in Mexico, and nearly all of them are considered critically endangered, according to AP. The salamander is famous for its unique appearance, as well as its ability to grow back severed limbs. Scientists believe that studying the axolotls' ability may help them to repair tissue damage or aid in cancer recovery, but they will have to work fast to uncover their secrets.
Zambrano told the UNAM Gazette that axolotl numbers had rapidly declined in surveys: from 6,000 per square kilometer in 1998 to 36 in 2014, a decline of 99.5% in less than two decades.
"Thanks to these surveys we realized that the amphibian is on the edge of extinction, and if we don't do something we will soon lose it in the wild," Zambrano said.
The campaign, which is organized by UNAM scientists, raised more than 450,000 pesos, or $26,300, last year to launch a captive breeding program and to restore habitat in the ancient canals of the southern Mexico City district of Xochimilco, according to AP.
The scientists said that the salamanders in Xochimilco were in danger because their habitat was menaced by urbanization, pollution, and invasive species, the UNAM Gazette reported.
"There is no more time for Xochimilco," Zambrano told AP.
So far, researchers have restored 40 floating islands and 5.5 kilometers of canal, created 36 biodiversity refuges, and installed 71 filters to improve water quality, the UNAM Gazette reported.
Axolotls are also susceptible to the chrytid fungus behind mass amphibian deaths worldwide, according to AP.
Scientists say more research is needed to truly know the extent of the damage to the axolotls' habitat and the risk to the all of the species.
Alejandro Calzada, who works for the Mexican government monitoring less popular species of axolotl, told AP that his team of nine is not able to monitor all the streams in Mexico City or the country as a whole.
"What I know is that we have to work urgently," Calzada said.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Echoing US Teachers, Thousands in Mexico Continue Fight Against School Privatization
A day after President Pena Nieto enacts education reform package, thousands hit streets of Mexico City in weeks-long battle
Sep 12, 2013
The momentum of striking teachers in Mexico showed no signs of abating on Wednesday, as 12 thousand teachers retook the streets of Mexico City, continuing their struggle against what they see as education privatization.
The demonstration, during which "anti-riot police fortified the area" around the presidential residence, comes a day after Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto enacted an education reform package that has been met with weeks of protests and encampments in the central square.
The Associated Press reports that Wednesday's action was the 14th time in two months that the teachers brought the city's center to a halt.
Protests were also held in other states including Oaxaca, where, Agence France-Presse notes, teachers say
the national test fails to take into account the fact that many work in rural and mountain classrooms in indigenous villages where standards must adapt to children who learn native languages before Spanish.
As we reported earlier, the reform
would wrest hiring and firing powers away from unions and impose mandatory evaluative tests on education workers. Teachers and their allies are slamming the 'reforms' as a ploy to blame teachers for Mexico's education shortcomings, rather than look to the severe under-funding and privatization of education that devastate school systems, particularly in poor areas.
Uprising radio adds that
Nieto's reforms are intended to address corruption and how people obtain teaching positions but it also pushes forth a more privatized educational agenda including establishing teacher evaluations through standardized testing - something US educators are quite familiar with.
* * *
For more on the teachers' strike, see the video below from The Real News Network:
Tens of Thousands March Against Mexico School PrivatizationTeachers blockade downtown Mexico City to protest education reforms they say is harmful to public schools See more videos: ...
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular