How many wild axolotls are there in the UK? I heard a news segment on the radio this morning about an axolotl that had been caught in the wild in Wales. Here’s a transcript:

An endangered Mexican axolotl, a species of aquatic salamander, has been found living under a bridge near Bridgend in south Wales by a ten-year-old girl. The amphibian is the size of a small cat, and it’s the first documented discovery of the species in the wild in the UK.

Evie Hill was on holiday with her family when they stopped at the dipping bridge over the river Ogmore.

I went down to the bank and there was this thing with gills on its head and I’m like, that’s an axolotl, and I went, Mum, there’s an axolotl in the river, and she said, no there’s not, you’re not going back in the water, though I went back in the water anyway because I could see it and then I caught it and brought it back and my cousin’s going mum, Evie’s caught the axolotl, she’s caught it!

So of course the first thing I did was to open a browser and search for a picture of this small-cat-sized critter. I found a slightly longer standalone version of the story with a small picture of the axolotl’s face, but nothing more.

I did, however, find something similar from September last year in an “Axolotls Lovers” [sic] group on Facebook.

Hi. My son recently rescued a axolotl from a river near us. Being the uk waters and fast flowing waters she must have had a really bad time and lucky my son found her. I managed to quickly get a tank together for her and shes setting well i think lol. I have done alot of research and hope im doing things right for her. Any tips on helping her gain weight as she was very skinny and help her grow her fluffy gills again?also finding it straige she has no black dots in her eyes they are see through. She obviously had a very stressful time being dumped in a river. Any information il need to know would be a massive help.

A few seconds of searching for the author’s name led to their Instagram account with a video of the axolotl.

So … is it really “the first documented discovery of the species in the wild in the UK”? (And do BBC journalists actually go beyond merely repeating what they’re told?)

An interesting detail is that this other person also appears to live in or near Cardiff: they are pictured wearing University of South Wales/Prifysgol De Cymru scrubs and talk about visiting Clearwell Farm. This raises the possibility that there are more axolotls living wild in south Wales, and perhaps even that they can survive over the winter!