“Adopt a Sea Urchin” campaign launched in Mexico to save iconic species from pollution, the trout

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Environmental scientists from Mexico’s National Autonomous University on Friday launched a fundraising campaign to support environmental conservation efforts. Sea urchinsIt is a distinctive and endangered fish-like species of salamander.

The campaign, called “Adoptaxolotl,” is asking people for as little as 600 pesos (about $35) to virtually adopt one of the little “water monsters.” Virtual adoption comes with live updates on your axolotl’s health. For a lower cost, donors can purchase one of the creatures for a virtual dinner.

In their prime habitat, the population density of Mexican sea urchins (ah-ho-LOH’-tulz) has declined by 99.5% in less than two decades, according to the scientists behind the fundraising campaign.

The Adoptaxolotl campaign last year raised just over 450,000 pesos ($26,300) for a captive-breeding pilot program and habitat restoration efforts in the ancient region. Aztec aqueducts in Xochimilcoone of the southern neighborhoods of Mexico City.

However, there are not enough resources to conduct comprehensive research, said Alejandro Calzada, an ecologist who surveys lesser-known species of sea urchins for the government’s Department of Environment.

“We lack significant monitoring of all the streams in Mexico City,” let alone the entire country, said Calzada, who leads a team of nine researchers. “For such a large area, this is not enough.”

Although this creature’s popularity has been on the rise recently, almost all of the 18 species of sea urchin are found in Mexico It remains critically endangeredthreatened by encroachment from water pollution, deadly amphibian fungi and non-native rainbow trout.

While scientists could find an average of 6,000 sea urchins per square kilometer in Mexico, there are now only 36, according to the latest count by the National Autonomous University. A recent international study found that fewer than a thousand Mexican sea urchins remain in the wild.

Luis Zambrano Gonzalez, one of the university scientists who announced the fundraiser, told the Associated Press that he hopes to start a new census (the first since 2014) in March.

“There’s no more time for Xochimilco,” Zambrano said. “The ‘pollution’ invasion is very strong: the football fields, the floating dens. ‘It’s very sad.’

Without data on the number and distribution of different sea urchin species in Mexico, it is difficult to know how long these creatures have survived, and where to prioritize available resources.

“What I know is that we have to act urgently,” Calzada said.

Axolotls have grown to become a cultural icon in Mexico due to their unique, slimy appearance and uncanny ability to grow limbs. In laboratories around the world, scientists believe this healing power could hold the secret to tissue repair and even cancer recovery.

In the past, government conservation programs have largely focused on the most popular species: the Mexican sea urchin, found in Xochimilco. But other species can be found all over the country, from small streams in the Valley of Mexico to the northern Sonora Desert.

Expanding urbanization in Mexico City has damaged water quality in canals, while in lakes surrounding the capital, rainbow trout escaping from farms can displace sea urchins and eat their food.

Calzada said his team is increasingly finding dead sea urchins charred fungus, A skin-eating disease that causes catastrophic deaths in amphibians from Europe to Australia.

While academics rely on donations, and Calzada’s team turns to a group of volunteers, the Mexican government recently agreed to cut funding for its environment department by 11%.

Over its six-year term, the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador will have advanced 35% less money To the country’s environment ministry more than before, according to an analysis of Mexico’s 2024 budget.

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