In the lakeside city of Pátzcuaro, Mexico, a group of Dominican nuns have shown a traditional side of Catholicism that many people do not take note of. Inside the Monasterio de la Virgen Inmaculada de la Salud, the sisters care for hundreds of achoques, unusual aquatic salamanders found naturally in only one place on Earth: Lake Pátzcuaro in the state of Michoacán.
The achoque, or Ambystoma dumerilii, is a close relative of the better-known axolotl. It keeps its feathery external gills throughout adulthood and remains aquatic. Despite its remarkable biology, the achoque is Critically Endangered. Chester Zoo, which works with Mexican conservationists on the species, reported in 2025 that there may be as few as 150 individuals remaining in the wild.
The sisters’ connection with the salamander did not begin as a modern conservation project. Achoques have long held cultural importance for the Indigenous Purépecha communities around Lake Pátzcuaro, where they have traditionally been used as food and in medicine. The Dominican sisters also raised achoques for use in a traditional cough remedy. When the wild population began to collapse in the 1980s, however, their experience keeping the animals took on a new significance. The convent’s captive population became an important safeguard against extinction.
Caring for achoques is demanding work. The salamanders require carefully managed water conditions, feeding and close observation. Breeding them successfully also requires detailed knowledge of their behaviour and development. Young salamanders must be managed particularly carefully because they can attack or eat one another. Over time, the sisters developed husbandry skills that now complement the work of professional scientists.
Their conservation effort has increasingly become a partnership between faith, local knowledge and modern science. Researchers from Mexican institutions and Chester Zoo have worked alongside the nuns to study the species and improve techniques for protecting it. In one recent project, scientists tested tiny identification microchips on 80 captive achoques. Twenty-eight of the animals came from the monastery. The chips, about the size of a grain of rice, allow researchers to identify individual salamanders and record information such as their sex, health and approximate age. The trial found no long-term health effects in the animals studied.
Such technology could prove especially useful in Lake Pátzcuaro, where conservationists are trying to understand how many achoques still survive. The lake has been transformed by pollution, falling water levels and introduced fish such as carp and bass. Because the lake has no natural outflow, pollutants can accumulate in its water. Conservation teams now monitor wild salamanders, rescue eggs caught in fishing nets and study the species’ genetics and health.
The goal is not simply to maintain achoques in aquariums forever. Conservationists hope to strengthen a healthy wild population and protect the lake ecosystem on which both wildlife and surrounding communities depend. That will require habitat protection, scientific research and cooperation with local people.
Their work began with a traditional remedy, evolved into captive breeding and now forms part of an international conservation effort. In rooms lined with tanks rather than laboratory benches, the nuns have helped preserve a species that might otherwise be disappearing unnoticed.
