By AFPRelaxnews | Feb 28, 2022
Residents of a small town in western Mexico are celebrating the reintroduction into the wild of the tequila fish—an endemic species saved from the brink of extinction
A biologist weighs and measures a Tequila fish (zoogoneticus tequila) during a survey of the species that was successfully reintroduced to its natural habitat
Image: Ulises Ruiz / AFP
Residents of a small town in western Mexico are celebrating the reintroduction into the wild of the tequila fish—an endemic species saved from the brink of extinction.
The fish, whose scientific name is Zoogoneticus Tequila, was rescued in the 1990s by US and British conservationists who kept it in aquariums and helped it return to its original habitat in the Teuchitlan river.
Children in Teuchitlan, home to about 10,000 people, have been at the forefront of efforts to inform visitors not only about the importance of keeping their habitat clean, but also about the tequila fish.
_RSS_"The children are the ones who approach people on the river bank and tell them that in this river lives a little fish that is unique in the world... and that they participated in its reintroduction," said Consuelo Rivera, a 70-year-old retired teacher.
The tequila fish was reported to be extinct in 1998, possibly due to fragmentation of its habitat, pollution and competition from non-native species, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The species survived only in captivity for several years until conservationists, led by Michoacan University, began the process in 2014 to reintroduce it into the wild.
Since then the fish has gone from strength to strength, helped by the last major release of fish in 2018, said project leader Omar Dominguez.