India welcomes Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar’s ‘Cocaine Hippos’

At $3.5 million, Colombia will transport 70 hippos that once belonged to drug lord Pablo Escobar to foreign sanctuaries. In the late 1980s, the cocaine tycoon imported some African hippos to Colombia. But, following his death in 1993, the beasts were abandoned to wander freely in a hot, marshy part of the Antioquia province, where environmental officials have been unable to regulate their numbers, which are currently 150.

The majority of the hippopotamuses will be trapped and transported in the following months; 60 of the animals will go to India, and ten will go to the Ostok Sanctuary in northern Mexico.

A relief for Columbia after its continuous measures to deal with the ‘cocaine hippos’

Ernesto Zazueta, the proprietor of the Ostok Sanctuary, calculated that the project’s overall costs would be $3.5 million.  According to him and the local governor of the Colombian province where the hippos are found, they plan to use bait to lure the creatures into cages where they will be restrained before being put in special boxes for the trip.

Since the hippos got out after Escobar’s death, a huge population has grown in the Magdalena River valley, and the government has often failed to keep it under control.  Attempts to slaughter the animals were made by the authorities in 2009, but they were abandoned after a graphic image ignited widespread outrage. 

Hippos breed more rapidly than local specialists can track them down, capture them, and castrate them. Therefore, a sterilisation plan is still in place to control the number of animals. The most interesting fact is that the greatest population of hippos outside of Africa is formed of the original four that fled from Escobar’s country estate and currently number about 150. In the absence of natural predators to keep them in control, their population will keep growing uncontrollably.

The invasive species is a threat to Colombia’s biodiversity

Research shows that hippos are harming the Magdalena River’s environment, the largest river in a nation with one of the largest biodiversity in the world. The rich biodiversity of the river is now in danger, the water is contaminated, and fish and aquatic creatures are being killed since each hippo consumes roughly 40 kg of grass per night.

After being classified as an invasive species by the environment ministry of the nation last year, the hippo transfer proposal is seen as a desperate effort to save both the hippos’ lives and the environment.

Who was Pablo Escobar?

One of the most notorious criminals in history, Escobar was accountable for a bombing in Colombia and an unprecedented number of drug-related killings. On December 2, 1993, a day after his 44th birthday, Escobar was shot on a rooftop by police and troops in Medellin. He had made his sixth appearance on Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s richest people just five months prior to his death.