Fame and misfortune
The difficulties that axolotls face in the wild are almost diametrically opposed to the fame they’ve found in recent years. Axolotls have captured the human imagination for centuries, as evidenced by their roles in Aztec religion and stories, kra cc but the early 21st century seems to be a high point for them. An axolotl graces the 50 peso bill. There are axolotl-inspired Pokemon, and Reddit commenters have noted that the character Toothless from the “How to Train Your Dragon” movie series is distinctly axolotl-like.
The introduction of axolotls to Minecraft in 2021 neatly mapped onto an uptick in Google searches for the animals, and social media makes it easy for people to gain access to photos and videos of the salamanders, particularly the photogenic pink ones often kept as pets.
The axolotl pet trade probably doesn’t directly harm the wild populations since wild salamanders aren’t being poached or taken from Lake Xochimilco. However, Zambrano said, axolotls’ ubiquity in pop culture and pet stores might make people assume that because axolotls “live in all the tanks around the world, they are not in danger.”
Zambrano has been working in axolotl conservation for more than two decades. It’s a somewhat unusual challenge, he said, because axolotls live so closely to so many people, so the answer to saving them isn’t simply to create a wildlife preserve and keep people out.
“We have to be inventive in terms of the new ways of restoration and resilience and sustainable decisions,” he said.
These new practices include outreach efforts that aim for “synergy between local knowledge and scientific knowledge,” Zambrano said, especially among the chinamperos whose families have farmed the islands in Lake Xochimilco for generations.
A widespread return to the chinampa system, he said, would benefit the axolotls, because it would ensure cleaner habitat space for the salamanders than the lake’s current, more industrial uses provide.
Such efforts would require policy changes, but according to Zambrano, worldwide enthusiasm for the axolotls could bolster such a campaign. People who love them can even symbolically adopt an axolotl to help fund conservation programs. Getting people to recognize that their favorite, friendly faced salamander doesn’t just exist in the vacuum of the internet, but in the real world where it faces dire conservation challenges, Zambrano said, is “a huge achievement.”
Kate Golembiewski is a freelance science writer based in Chicago who geeks out about zoology, thermodynamics and death. She hosts the comedy talk show “A Scientist Walks Into a Bar.”