Hippopotamuses that inhabit the surroundings of Hacienda Nápoles and that once belonged to drug trafficker Pablo Escobar, are expected to be taken to India and Mexico, according to information from the manager of Animal Protection and Welfare of the Secretariat of Environment of Antioquia, in Bogotá, Colombia.
TheColombian environmental authorities also pointed out that these animals are descendants of the four offspring that the drug trafficker Escobar brought for his private zoo back in the 1980s.
Therefore, officials propose to undertake an unprecedented task in the country by attempting to transfer approximately 70 territorial hippopotamuses weighing up to three tons each, which have spread far beyond Hacienda Nápoles, where approximately 130 specimens are registered and, given their reproductive capacity and lack of natural predators, could grow into 400 in eight years.
Attraction plan for their capture
Given the plan that has been consolidating for approximately more than a year, it was indicated that specialized staff must capture the animals by luring them with food and then carry each individual in an iron container to be transported in trucks by land on a 150-kilometer journey to the José María Córdova de Rionegro international airport, from where they would leave for India or Mexico.
However, they see this transfer as a problem, given the high cost of the operation based on a plan to send 60 hippos to the Greens Zoological Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre in Gujarat, India, which, according to De Los Ríos Morales, would assume the cost of the containers and the air transfer, to achieve the transfer in 2023.
It should be noted that Ecuador, the Philippines, and Botswana have also expressed their willingness to receive some of these hippos in their countries, according to the Governor’s Office of Antioquia, Colombia.
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