RAMPAGING COCAINE HIPPOS ON THE ATTACK!
Cartel czar Escobar’s old pets unstoppable
COLOMBIA’S deadly cocaine hippo problem just got much worse — the big brutes, descendants of cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar’s original private zoo of illegal exotics, are starting to savage innocent locals!
“They’re very, very dangerous,” says one fearful local. “The hippos have started to attack people!”
The animals have been befouling major waterways and rampaging through the land ever since the original four cocaine hippos — so named because they were purchased with drug money — escaped Escobar’s estate after lawmen gunned down the dirtbag in 1993 at 44.
And as GLOBE first revealed, the overrun country had just begun an ambitious and near-impossible mission of trying to sterilize most of the nearly 200 three-ton marauders that plague the area — even though it’s hard and risky to trap the terrors, and the procedure costs $10,000 a pop!
Environmental authorities say two male hippos and one female were successfully sterilized in November but that has not made a dent in the population so far — and the plan calls for only 40 sterilizations per year, says environmental official David Echeverry López.
The beleaguered South American government counts 169 of the jumbo mammals in the country — mostly in the Magdalena River basin, where they spread fear and disease in what ecologist Nataly Castelblanco-Martínez has called “one of the greatest challenges of invasive species in the world.”
They estimate that without drastic measures, the “unpredictable” and “aggressive” herd will number 1,000 by 2025!
“We are in a race against time in terms of permanent environmental and ecosystem impacts,” sighs weary Colombian environmental minister Susana Muhamad.