The amphibian that never grew up is on the verge of going extinct in the wild.

New survey work suggests that fewer than 1,200 Mexican axolotls remain in its last stronghold, the Xochimilco area of central Mexico.

The axolotl is a type of salamander that uniquely spends its whole life in its larval form.

Its odd lifestyle, features and ability to regenerate body parts make it a popular animal kept in labs, schools and as pets.

But in the wild, the future is bleak for this "Peter Pan" of animals.

Reintroduction is not a good idea because it reduces the genetic variability and increases the chances of disease Biologist Dr Luis Zambrano

Recent surveys suggest that between 700 and 1,200 axolotls (Ambystoma mexicanum) survive in six reduced and scattered areas within the Xochimilco area of the Mexican Central Valley.

One of these surveys found just a single axolotl in the whole study region.

The long-term survival of the axolotl in the wild has now become critical, and demands urgent action to restore the animal's number and habitat, say scientists monitoring the population.

Forever young

The Mexican axolotl is highly unusual.

Altogether, there are around seven species of salamander belonging to the genus Ambystoma.

A captive dark colour morph

All are quite similar and may be called axolotls. Most are capable of retaining their larval forms throughout their whole lives.

But they usually do so in response to their environment, for example, if temperatures are too cold to emerge onto land as an adult salamander, the tadpole larvae may just keep growing underwater instead.

But the Mexican axolotl is the only species that never undergoes metamorphosis.

Instead each generation lives underwater as outsized larvae. Males and females mate underwater and the females lay eggs on nearby structures such as plants.

The Mexican axolotl's odd looks and unusual life history have also made it a favourite pet, and the subject of extensive biological research into its physiology.

Population crash

Though accurate information about the population of wild Mexican axolotls is hard to come by, recent evidence suggests that the population has declined alarmingly in recent decades.

For example, in 1998 there were thought to be around 6,000 axolotls per square kilometre of the Xochimilco.

Eggs of the endangered axolotl

By 2004 just 1,000 lived in the equivalent area, and by 2008 around 100 animals survived per square kilometre, Dr Luis Zambrano and colleagues at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, based in Mexico City report in the journal Biological Conservation.

That is a ten-fold reduction in four years and a 60-fold reduction in ten years, leading the International Union for Conservation of Nature to classify the species as endangered on its annual Red List of threatened species.

Now "our best estimates using unpublished data, but with two different techniques, sampling and genetic, suggests that the total amount of axolotls in the wild is between 700 and 1,200 animals," says Dr Zambrano.

"We are still analysing the data, so it may change a little bit. But we don't think it will change by an order of magnitude."

The axolotl's range is also highly restricted.

An axolotl in its larval, but much younger form

Dr Zambrano's team has surveyed the Xochimilco, a complex water system of artificial channels, small lakes and temporary wetlands that help supply Mexico City, a nearby city of some 18 million people.

As the city has increased in size, it has dramatically reduced the axolotl's natural habitat.

Zambrano's team calculate that the salamander now exists in just six isolated parts of the water system, often near to some of the few remaining natural springs supplying clear, fresh water.

Their most recent work shows that the reduction in water quality is one of the main factors driving the axolotl to extinction in the wild.

Another is the presence of large numbers of introduced carp and tilapia fish, which both compete ecologically with axolotls for food and resource, and also eat axolotl eggs.

Little refuge

While captive colonies of axolotls exist across Mexico, the US, Canada, Germany, the UK and Japan, reintroducing these animals would be a bad idea, say the scientists.

Prime axolotl habitat

"Reintroduction is not a good idea because it reduces the genetic variability and increases the chances of chytrdiomicosis disease," says Dr Zambrano.

Chytrdiomicosis is an often fatal condition caused by the chytrid fungus, which is decimating amphibian populations around the world.

Dr Zambrano's team are now embarking on a programme to create wild refuges for the Mexican axolotl, in a bid to arrest the decline in its numbers and prevent it going extinct in the wild.

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By Dan Levy

July 16 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. foreclosure filings hit a record in the first half, a sign that job losses and falling property prices deepened the housing recession, according to RealtyTrac Inc.

More than 1.5 million properties received a default or auction notice or were seized by banks in the six months through June, the Irvine, California-based seller of default data said today in a statement. That's a 15 percent increase from the year earlier. One in 84 U.S. households received a filing.

"People are losing their jobs, seeing their income go down and are underwater on their mortgage," Richard Green, director of the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, said in an interview. "It's a toxic combination."

Home prices in 20 major U.S. metropolitan areas dropped 18.1 percent in April from a year earlier, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index. The unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent in June, the highest since 1983, bringing the total number of lost jobs to about 6.5 million since the recession started in December 2007, the Labor Department said.

Defaults by subprime borrowers with poor credit histories spurred the housing recession and spread to prime borrowers as home prices and sales declined. The Mortgage Bankers Association said May 28 that prime fixed-rate home loans to the most creditworthy borrowers accounted for 29 percent of new foreclosures in the first quarter, the biggest share of any type of loan.

One in eight Americans is now late on a payment or already in foreclosure, the Washington-based mortgage group said.

California, Florida Lead

Twenty of the 50 U.S. counties with the highest foreclosure rates were in California and 12 were in Florida, RealtyTrac said.

Clark County, Nevada, home to Las Vegas, had the highest rate in the nation with one in 13 households receiving a filing, according to RealtyTrac. Lee County, Florida, home to Fort Myers and Cape Coral, ranked second at one in 14. Three counties tied for third place at one in 15 households: Merced, California; Osceola, Florida; and Lyon, Nevada.

Riverside, California ranked sixth; Nye, Nevada was seventh; and San Joaquin, San Bernardino and Stanislaus, all in California, ranked eighth through 10th, RealtyTrac said.

No Tide Turning

"I don't see any turning of the tide," said Donald Haurin, an economics professor at Ohio State University in Columbus. "The effect of more foreclosures will be continued downward pressure on house prices, and lead to difficulty making mortgage payments that are continuing to reset."

Payment-option adjustable rate mortgages will contribute to higher defaults, said Rick Sharga, executive vice president of RealtyTrac. Option ARMs allow borrowers to pay less than the interest they owe each month, tacking on the difference to their total debt and creating the potential for bigger bills in the future.

About three quarters of those loans will adjust to require higher payments next year and in 2011, with the peak coming in August 2011 when about 54,000 loans recast, according to data from First American CoreLogic of Santa Ana, California.

Government and lender-supported plans to help troubled homeowners -- including President Barack Obama's $275 billion pledge to jumpstart sales and encourage banks to modify sour loans -- have had little effect, Haurin said.

New Approaches

As many as 3.2 million U.S. households will get a foreclosure filing by the end of the year, Sharga said.

"Stemming the tide of foreclosures is a critical component to stabilizing the housing market, so it is imperative that the lending industry and the government work in tandem to find new approaches to address this issue," James Saccacio, RealtyTrac's chief executive officer, said in the statement.

More than 8.3 million U.S. mortgage holders owed more than their homes were worth and an additional 2.2 million borrowers will be "underwater" on their loans if prices decline another 5 percent, First American said March 4.

Foreclosure filings in the second quarter totaled a record 889,829, up 11 percent from the first quarter and up 20 percent from a year earlier, RealtyTrac said. June filings were 336,173, the third highest monthly total in records going back to January 2005.

Nevada had the highest foreclosure rate in the first half, with one in every 16 households receiving a filing, RealtyTrac said. A total of 68,708 properties were affected, 61 percent more than in the first half of 2008.

Top 10 States

Arizona had the second highest rate, one in 30 households; Florida was third at one in 33; and California ranked fourth at one in 34. Other states in the top 10 included Utah, Georgia, Michigan, Illinois, Idaho and Colorado.

California led in total filings with 391,611, an increase of 15 percent from a year earlier; followed by Florida at 268,064 for a 42 percent increase, RealtyTrac said. Arizona was third with 89,799 filings, up 55 percent, and Illinois was fourth with 68,932, up 29 percent.

Other states in the top 10 for their sheer number of foreclosures and defaults were Nevada, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Texas and Virginia.

New Jersey had the 21st highest rate, one in 146 households, and 23,889 filings. That's a 30 percent decrease from a year earlier. Connecticut had the 27th highest rate, one in 163 households, and had 8,801 filings, a 32 percent decrease.

New York ranked 38th. One in 328 households received a filing, which fell 19 percent to 24,210, said RealtyTrac, which collects data from more than 2,200 counties representing 90 percent of the U.S. population.

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My generation would like to break up with you.

Everyday, I see a widening gap in how you and we understand the world — and what we want from it. I think we have irreconcilable differences.

You wanted big, fat, lazy "business." We want small, responsive, micro-scale commerce.

You turned politics into a dirty word. We want authentic, deep democracy — everywhere.

You wanted financial fundamentalism. We want an economics that makes sense for people — not just banks.

You wanted shareholder value — built by tough-guy CEOs. We want real value, built by people with character, dignity, and courage.

You wanted an invisible hand — it became a digital hand. Today's markets are those where the majority of trades are done literally robotically. We want a visible handshake: to trust and to be trusted.

You wanted growth — faster. We want to slow down — so we can become better.

You didn't care which communities were capsized, or which lives were sunk. We want a rising tide that lifts all boats.

You wanted to biggie size life: McMansions, Hummers, and McFood. We want to humanize life.

You wanted exurbs, sprawl, and gated anti-communities. We want a society built on authentic community.

You wanted more money, credit and leverage — to consume ravenously. We want to be great at doing stuff that matters.

You sacrificed the meaningful for the material: you sold out the very things that made us great for trivial gewgaws, trinkets, and gadgets. We're not for sale: we're learning to once again do what is meaningful.

There's a tectonic shift rocking the social, political, and economic landscape. The last two points above are what express it most concisely. I hate labels, but I'm going to employ a flawed, imperfect one: Generation "M."

What do the "M"s in Generation M stand for? The first is for a movement. It's a little bit about age — but mostly about a growing number of people who are acting very differently. They are doing meaningful stuff that matters the most. Those are the second, third, and fourth "M"s.

Gen M is about passion, responsibility, authenticity, and challenging yesterday's way of everything. Everywhere I look, I see an explosion of Gen M businesses, NGOs, open-source communities, local initiatives, government. Who's Gen M? Obama, kind of. Larry and Sergey. The Threadless, Etsy, and Flickr guys. Ev, Biz and the Twitter crew. Tehran 2.0. The folks at Kiva, Talking Points Memo, and FindtheFarmer. Shigeru Miyamoto, Steve Jobs, Muhammad Yunus, and Jeff Sachs are like the grandpas of Gen M. There are tons where these innovators came from.

Gen M isn't just kind of awesome — it's vitally necessary. If you think the "M"s sound idealistic, think again: they're razor-sharp pragmatism. Why?

The great crisis isn't going away, changing, or "morphing." It's the same old crisis — and it's growing.

You've failed to recognize it for what it really is. It is, as I've repeatedly pointed out, in our institutions: the rules by which our economy is organized.

But they're your institutions, not ours. You made them — and they're broken. Here's what I mean:

"... For example, the auto industry has cut back production so far that inventories have begun to shrink — even in the face of historically weak demand for motor vehicles. As the economy stabilizes, just slowing the pace of this inventory shrinkage will boost gross domestic product, or GDP, which is the nation's total output of goods and services."

Clearing the backlog of SUVs built on 30-year-old technology is going to pump up GDP? So what? There couldn't be a clearer example of why GDP is a totally flawed concept, an obsolete institution. We don't need more land yachts clogging our roads: we need a 21st Century auto industry.

I was (kind of) kidding about seceding before. Here's what it looks like to me: every generation has a challenge, and this, I think, is ours: to foot the bill for yesterday's profligacy — and to create, instead, an authentically, sustainably shared prosperity.

Anyone — young or old — can answer it. Generation M is more about what you do and who you are than when you were born. So the question is this: do you still belong to the 20th century - or the 21st?

Love,

Umair and the Edge Economy Community

PS - Fire away in the comments with thoughts, questions, or — because I've left a ton of awesomeness out of this post — more examples of Gen M people and organizations.

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