Pablo Escobar’s ‘cocaine hippos’ face deportation after multiplying across Colombia – National | 24CA News
Colombia is proposing to seize and transport 70 hippopotamuses to India and Mexico after a big inhabitants of the African species was allowed to proliferate within the river and lakes across the late Pablo Escobar’s property.
What began as 4 illegally imported “cocaine hippos,” who had been pets of the cartel kingpin, rapidly multiplied to a bunch of 150 robust within the absence of any pure predators, Nature stories. The Colombian authorities has largely left the hippos unchecked till now, even though they’re wreaking havoc on the world’s ecology, researchers say.
The cocaine hippos escaped Escobar’s Hacienda Napoles ranch after the drug lord was killed by nationwide police in 1993. Since then, the hippos have taken up residence within the close by Magdalena River watershed and past, the place they might proliferate to 1,500 in 16 years, based on 2021 modelling.
Escobar’s Hacienda Napoles — and the hippos — have change into an area vacationer attraction within the years for the reason that kingpin died. But the query of tackle the hippo problem has pitted some locals in opposition to ecologists, with some “enamoured by the animals’ charisma and value as a tourist attraction and others concerned about the threat they pose to the environment and local fishing communities,” Nature writes.
Scientists warn that the hippos should not have a pure predator in Colombia and are a possible drawback for biodiversity since their feces modifications the composition of the rivers and will affect the habitat of manatees and capybaras.
“If we don’t do anything, 20 years from now the problem will have no solution,” says Nataly Castelblanco Martínez, a Colombian conservation biologist on the Autonomous University of Quintana Roo.
The plan to take them to India and Mexico has been forming for greater than a 12 months, mentioned Lina Marcela de los Ríos Morales, director of animal safety and welfare at Antioquia’s atmosphere ministry.
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The hippos could be lured with meals into massive, iron containers and transferred by truck to the town of Rionegro, 150 kilometres away. From there, they might be flown to India and Mexico, the place there are sanctuaries and zoos able to taking in and caring for the animals.
“It is possible to do, we already have experience relocating hippos in zoos nationwide,” mentioned David Echeverri López, a spokesman for Cornare, the native environmental authority that may be in command of the relocations.
The plan is to ship 60 hippos to the Greens Zoological Rescue & Rehabilitation Kingdom in Gujarat, India, which De los Ríos Morales mentioned would cowl the price of the containers and airlift. Another 10 hippos would go to zoos and sanctuaries in Mexico such because the Ostok, positioned in Sinaloa.
In 2022, Colombia’s authorities declared the cocaine hippos a poisonous invasive species, sparking fears among the many locals that the beloved animals could be culled or sterilized.
At the time, Environment Minister Carlos Eduardo Correa mentioned native communities could be consulted about any plan to regulate the hippos’ inhabitants.
Álvaro Molina, 57, an area to the world, advised The Associated Press that he supported the hippos — regardless of having been attacked by one up to now. He was out fishing in the future when he felt a motion beneath his canoe that spilled him into the water.
“The female attacked me once,” he mentioned, “because she had recently given birth.”
At the time, Molina mentioned he feared that the federal government meant to hurt the hippos. Nature stories that researchers within the nation had referred to as for a strict administration plan that concerned culling some hippos and capturing and relocating others.
Many individuals AP interviewed within the space mentioned they received together with the hippos and opposed even sterilizing them, not to mention killing some.
“They make laws from a distance. We live with the hippopotamuses here and we have never thought of killing them,” Isabel Romero Jerez, an area conservationist, mentioned in 2022. “The hippopotamuses aren’t African now; they are Colombians.”
Hopefully, the present plan to move about half of the hippos out of South America strikes the precise steadiness for ecologists and locals alike.
De los Ríos Morales mentioned the relocation would assist management the hippo inhabitants, and that deporting them is a extra humane various to exterminating them as an invasive species.
— With information from The Associated Press
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