The Colombian government doesn’t know what to do with the hippos that escaped from Pablo Escobar’s former Hacienda Nápoles. It was the eighties when the drug dealer decided to put two female hippos and one male in his house. Forty years later, this species has reproduced until it reaches 160 animals that roam freely in the Magdalena River basin.
Gustavo Petro’s team is weighing the option of exporting about seventy specimens that escaped from the old ranch. Some sanctuaries in India and Mexico are willing to take in these animals, which pose an environmental and social threat to the departments in the area.
Colombia has been considering the option of euthanizing or sterilizing them for some time, in order to stop their reproduction. These animals have caused numerous accidents with humans and the inaction of the government has allowed them to live freely in the river basins that connect different areas.
Now the Antioquia authorities have set themselves the arduous task of transferring them by plane – the same way they entered Colombia – to India and Mexico. In addition, it is likely that Ecuador, the Philippines and Botswana will also agree to take in part of the hippo colony left behind by the kingpin.
A total of sixty specimens would be transferred to the Greens Zoological Rescue and Rehabilitation Kingdom in Gujarat, India, and ten to the Ostok Sanctuary in Culiacán, Mexico. Escobar was a lover of exotic animals and on one of his extravagant whims he wanted to build a zoo on the Hacienda Nápoles.
The drug trafficker moved dozens of giraffes, elephants, ostriches and other species not native to Colombia to the huge ranch, endangering wildlife. At the time of Escobar’s death in 1993, there were still four hippos left on the ranch and three decades later they have reproduced until reaching a colony of more than a hundred.
