Colombia wants to move notorious breeding Pablo Escobar cocaine hippos to new location
Around 70 hippos live near former drug kingpin Pablo Escobar's ranch in Colombia after he illegally imported three females and one male when he lived there. They keep on breeding.
Colombian authorities are working to relocate scores of hippopotamuses located near Pablo Escobar’s old ranch as their growing population threatens to cause issues with the local biodiversity. Environmental authorities estimate there are around 130 hippos in the area in Antioquia province and their population could reach 400 within the next 10 years, with risk to human life becoming too great to justify.
Since Escobar illegally imported four hippos to his Hacienda Napoles ranch during his reign as Colombia’s leading drug kingpin in the 1980s, the animal population has soared to almost 130.
The animals have now spread far beyond the ranch, about 125 miles from Bogota along the Magdalena River.
The complex is located by the town of Puerto Triunfo, approximately 93 miles east of Medellin and 155 miles northwest of Bogota.
Colombia wants to move about 70 of the hippopotamuses to two other countries as part of a plan to control their booming population.
Escobar's ranch and so-called “cocaine hippos” have become tourist attractions in the years since the kingpin was killed by police in December 1993.
When his ranch was abandoned, the hippos survived and reproduced in local rivers and favourable climatic conditions.
Environmental authorities estimate there are around 130 hippos in the area in Antioquia province and their population could reach 400 within the next decade.
The plan is now to transport the hippos to Mexico and India, with the details being thrashed out over the past year.
READ MORE: Hippo swallows two year old boy before vomiting him back out alive [REVEAL]
Lina Marcela de los Ríos Morales, director of animal protection and welfare at Antioquia’s environment ministry, has been leading these efforts.
She said the plan was to focus on the hippos living in rivers surrounding the ranch, not those inside the ranch as they are in a controlled environment.
It looks as if Mexico and India will be the nations to received the animals, despite interest elsewhere. Ecuador, the Philippines and Botswana have also expressed interest in relocating the hippos to their countries, the Antioquia Governor’s Office reported.
Don't miss...
Hippos make good neighbours - major study finds [LATEST]
Pablo Escobar's 'cocaine hippos' wreaking havoc [INSIGHT ]
Mini hippo born at Ednburgh Zoo is finally named [REVEAL ]
The animals will be lured into large, iron containers with food before being loaded onto trucks and transferred to the international airport in the city of Rionegro, about 90 miles away.
The Greens Zoological Rescue & Rehabilitation Kingdom in Gujarat, India, along the country's western coast and Arabian Sea, will take 60 hippos.
The remaining 10 hippos will go to zoos and sanctuaries in Mexico, including the Ostok in Sinaloa, along the Gulf of California.
Though the animals’ native habitat is Africa, it is more humane than the alternate proposal of exterminating them as an invasive species, with relocation to the African continent too dangerous.