Cocaine tycoon Pablo Escobar's pet hippos find home in India

Bogota: 70 hippos that belonged to the late drug kingpin Pablo Escobar will have to be transported at a cost of nearly $3.5 million, the Columbian government has informed.

While the majority of the hippopotamuses will be captured and relocated in the upcoming months, with 60 going to an unidentified facility in India and 10 going to the Ostok Sanctuary in northern Mexico.

As per reports, the cocaine tycoon had imported a few of the creatures from Africa to Colombia. And since his death in 1993, the hippos were left to roam in the hot marshy area of Antioquia city where environment officials are having a hard time controlling the rising population of the territorial bulls.

The owner of the Ostok Sanctuary, Ernesto Zazueta, estimated that the total expense of the project would be $3.5 million.

They intend to use bait to entice the animals into pens where they will stay confined before being placed in special crates for the transfer, according to him and the local governor of the Colombian region where the hippos are found.

The government has frequently failed to control the booming population that has settled in the Magdalena River basin since the hippos broke free after Escobar’s death.

In 2009, the government also tried to kill the animals but gave up after a graphic image sparked widespread anger.

Although there is still a sterilisation plan in place, hippos reproduce more quickly than local experts can locate, capture, and castrate them.

About 130 hippos still exist today from the initial four that ran away from Escobar’s country estate; this is the largest population of hippos outside of Africa.

If there are no natural predators to control them, their number will continue to increase exponentially.

1,400 hippos on the planet by 2034

According to studies, hippos are destroying the ecosystem of the Magdalena River, the largest river in one of the nations with the greatest biodiversity. Since each hippo consumes about 40 kg of grass per night, just their waste alone is endangering the river’s diverse wildlife, poisoning the water, and murdering fish.

The hippo transfer plan is viewed as a last-ditch attempt to save the hippos’ lives after the environment ministry labelled them an invasive species last year.

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