Got a Big Pool? Cocaine King’s Hippos Need New Home

Cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar has been dead for thirty years but at least part of his legacy lives on in the form of voracious hippopotamuses, which the Colombian government now has to deal with.

In the 1980s, Escobar smuggled four hippos out of Africa to his Hacienda Nápoles estate, about 100 miles east of Medellín. After Don Pablo died (in a hail of bullets, naturally) in 1993, the animals were allowed to roam freely on the estate. By 2007 the hippos had multiplied to 16 and were roaming further afield than the abandoned property.

Today there are about 150 of the invasive species, stomping and chomping through the Magdalena River basin. The government has tried culling the herd but graphic photos of that carnage outraged the human population, so authorities now attempt to sterilize the existing herd. Unfortunately the hippos are breeding faster than local experts can find, catch, and castrate them.

Now the regional authorities are planning a new strategy. The government of Antioquia state says it is in negotiations to ship dozens of the creatures to other countries. A park in India is prepared to take in 60 of the beasts, while a sanctuary in Mexico will take another ten. The cost of the extraditions will be about $3.5 million, a bargain considering the damage wrought by the hippo diaspora already.

It’s unclear how the government can expect to round up 70 hippos when it hasn’t been able to catch and castrate the 3-ton beasts as fast as they reproduce, but it is going to give it a try. They gotta try something. How about drugging them?

Photo credit: Fernando Vergara / AP