A group of 70 wild hippos left behind by drug trafficker Pablo Escobar will be relocated from Colombia to Mexico and India, the governor of the Antioquia department, Aníbal Gaviria, announced Thursday.
“The Ostok Sanctuary International Foundation has expressed interest in relocating a group of 70 hippos from Puerto Triunfo to natural sanctuaries in India and Mexico,” said Gaviria.
“Because we are friends of animals, in our government we have been accompanying the process. Life first,” he said.
“It should be possible to do it easily. We hope that if the permits, the most important and necessary, those of the Colombian Agricultural Institute (ICA), are accelerated, we can carry out the translocation during this first semester”, added Gaviria.
A total of 10 hippos will be sent to a sanctuary in Mexico and 60 to a park in India. Transfer costs could amount to USD 1 million, according to Cornare, an environmental protection entity.
During his lifetime, Escobar brought to the country some 1,200 exotic animals from around the world, including elephants, ostriches, zebras, camels, giraffes and hippos, which he kept at his private ranch, Hacienda Nápoles, in Antioquia.
After his death in 1993, most of the animals were transferred to zoos around the country, except for the four hippos, one male and three females, because they could not be captured and transported.
Three decades later, the animals have spread throughout the country, especially in Puerto Triunfo, near the Magdalena River basin. Experts say there appear to be more than 100 hippos in the country and their population continues to grow steadily due to a lack of natural predators. In 10 years there could be more than 150 hippos, according to a study by the Humboldt Institute, a biodiversity research institution.
Last year, the Colombian Ministry of the Environment included hippos in a list of invasive species that are a potential problem for biodiversity and are having a negative impact on the habitat of native species.