Escobar’s hippos sent overseas to save habitat
COLOMBIA is planning to relocate at least 70 hippos that live near Pablo Escobar’s former ranch – descendants of four illegally imported from Africa by the late drug baron in the 1980s – to India and Mexico under a plan to control the population.
The hippos, which are territorial and weigh up to three tons, have spread far beyond the Hacienda Nápoles ranch. Environmental officials estimate there are 130 hippos in Antioquia province, a number that could rise to 400 in eight years.
The ranch and hippos have become a tourist attraction since Escobar was killed by police in 1993. When his ranch was abandoned, the hippos survived and reproduced in local rivers.
Scientists warn that the hippos do not have a natural predator in Colombia and pose a threat to biodiversity because their faeces change the composition of the rivers and could affect the habitat of manatees and capybaras.
Last year, Colombia’s government declared them a toxic invasive species.
Sixty hippos would be sent to Greens Zoological Rescue and Rehabilitation Kingdom in Gujarat, India.
A further 10 would go to zoos and sanctuaries in Mexico.
The proposal targets hippos living in the rivers surrounding the ranch, not the ones inside it because they are in a controlled environment. Lina Marcela de los Ríos Morales, director of animal welfare at Antioquia’s environment ministry, said that although the animal is native to Africa it is more humane to relocate them in different countries than the alternate option of exterminating them.