Colombia’s ‘cocaine hippos’ to be translocated to India and Mexico

Posted by Jordyn Johnson on 8 March 2023

Colombia is currently planning on relocating around 70 of its invasive ‘cocaine hippos’ to India and Mexico.

colombia cocaine hippos

What exactly is a ‘cocaine hippo’

In the 1980s world-renowned drug lord, Pablo Escobar smuggled several exotic animals onto his ranch 250 km outside Medellîn (Colombia’s second largest city). His smuggled menagerie included one male and three female hippos, brought over from Africa (or a US zoo, as no one really knows) purely to entertain Escobar and his guests. This is where these hippos got the name ‘cocaine hippo.’

When Escobar died in 1993, authorities collected and relocated all of his exotic creatures except for the hippos as they posed too difficult to transport. They were left to enjoy Colombia’s main waterway, the Magdalena River, and have added significantly to their numbers over the last 30 years.

The ‘cocaine hippo’ problem

The shallow water sources and a large variety of foods have allowed the population to grow to an estimated 150 hippos. Without natural predators and yearly droughts to keep numbers down, Nature predicts that within the next twenty years, there could be as many as 1 500 hippos.

‘The introduction of such a significant species to an already-finely-balanced eco-system is apparently wreaking havoc on local biodiversity,’ reported Time Out. Hippos create an environment that allows cyanobacteria, toxic algae, to thrive. Their faeces kills specific fish species which negatively affects fishermen, and they displace endangered animals like the Antillean manatee, by eating up their food sources.

They are also a threat to Colombia’s agriculture sector, damaging and eating crops. Although there has not been a recorded human-hippo incidence, scientists believe that as their population grows attacks on humans will become commonplace.

colombia cocaine hippos

Past attempts

In 2009 the Colombian government attempted to cull the mammals, but photos spread of Escobar’s Pepe (his male hippo) after being shot and killed, causing a national outcry. A US lawsuit was filed against the Colombian government and in 2021 hippos were declared as ‘people with legal rights’ according to First Post.

By October 2021, about 24 hippos had been sterilised with an immunocontraceptive vaccine to halt population growth. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell which hippos were sterilised and the rest of the animals continued breeding.

Relocating the hippos

Planning to translocate 60 hippos to the Greens Zoological Rescue & Rehabilitation Kingdom in Gujarat, India, and 10 hippos to sanctuaries in Mexico has been in the works for the past year.

Governor Anibal Gaviria said that the goal was ‘to take them to countries where these institutions have the capacity to receive them, and to (home) them properly.’ He explained that translocating 70 hippos would help control Colombia’s hippo population

colombia cocaine hippos

Picture: Getaway gallery

The goal was ‘to take them to countries where these institutions have the capacity to receive them, and to (home) them properly and to control their reproduction,’ Gaviria said.

Authorities hope to learn how to control the remaining population while keeping them as tourist attractions.

María Ángela Echeverry, a professor of Biology at Javeriana University explained to CNN why translocating the hippos to Africa is out of the question. ‘Every time we move animals or plants from one place to the other, we also move their pathogens, their bacteria, and their viruses. And we could be bringing new diseases to Africa, not just for the hippos that are out there in the wild, but new diseases for the entire African ecosystem that hasn’t evolved with that type of disease.’

Pictures: GettyImages

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