How Pablo Escobar’s hippos ruined the Colombian countryside
When one pictures the infamous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, his thick moustache, menacing eyes, and violent drug cartel that ravaged the country come to mind. Certainly not squidgy hippos, animals that comprised a large part of his private zoo. The story of how Escobar came to fall in love with these lumbering creatures and how they now dominate the wildlife in Colombia to a dangerous point is a fascinating and unknown one.
For those who don’t know, Escobar, who came from Medellín, was the puppetmaster behind countless bombings, kidnappings, and murders on an industrial scale up until his death in the 1990s. For example, he killed half of Colombia’s top judges by storming into the Supreme Court in 1985. He bombed the intelligence quarters and evaded 13,000 raids during an unprecedented manhunt that lasted almost two years. All of this happened while the ‘King of Cocaine’ amassed an estimated net worth of $30billion by monopolising the cocaine trade in the United States. This turned him into the richest drug lord in history.
So what does one do with all that money? Well, like many billionaires, he splashed his cash on creating a massive compound (known as a ‘hacienda’) with a mansion, helipads, bullrings and a zoo. Escobar went to town on the array of animals in his personal zoo, buying all sorts of exotic animals, including elephants, giraffes, zebras, ostriches, and kangaroos.
Among the exotic animals on his shopping list were hippos, those cuddly, rubbery water bears which are just as aggressive as they are cute. In Africa, hippos are estimated to kill about 500 people a year, making them among the most dangerous animals to humans. Their bite is almost three times stronger than that of a lion, and Escobar was clearly unaware of this.
It was all fun and exciting for him and his playground zoo until the story took a turn when he was shot dead by police in 1993. In an outcry of happiness and relief, the local people poured onto the property and tore apart the villa in search of money. Then, in 1998, the government seized the property and moved the animals to the zoos, except for the hippos, which were thought too dangerous to move. So they were left there, and, oh boy, did things get worse.
The hippo population kept growing, given that female hippos can procreate 25 times in their lifetime. As the population grew, the hippos began to migrate elsewhere, and now, the authorities have lost track of how many there are. These massive animals, native to sub-Saharan Africa, have begun to dominate ponds, swamps, lakes, forests and even inhabited regions of Colombia, posing a great danger to people.
Moreover, they produce an average of nine kilograms of faeces per day, which has begun to poison soil and water, damaging entire ecosystems. Experts are attempting to find solutions by sterilising some hippos, but these operations are costly and dangerous. Currently, they are nowhere near reaching the estimated 40 sterilisations per year. It is abundantly clear that Escobar left behind more than just a ginormous drug cartel to clean up…
