Colombia is going to sterilize Pablo Escobar's hippos to prevent them from continuing to reproduce

INTERNATIONAL / By Luis Moreno

One of the most famous legacies of Pablo Escobar Gaviria, the mythical Colombian drug trafficking kingpin and possibly the most famous in history at his level, were his hippos.

The billionaire drug trafficker had the whim of creating a private zoo in his domain at the famous Hacienda Nápoles, and among other wild animals, he imported African hippos.. When their empire collapsed, the animals escaped and reproduced, forming a stable population of just over 150 individuals, but one that threatens the local ecosystem.

Now, the Government of Colombia wants to tackle this problem by sterilizing animals so that they stop reproducing and continue to pose an ecological problem, reports the Mirror.

A study published in the journal Ecology revealed that these enormous hippos have been excreting their waste into local lakes and rivers and substantially changing the oxygen levels and chemistry of the waters.

The authors, researchers from the University of California and the Pedagogical and Technological University of Colombia, believe that the population will continue to increase, causing more environmental damage.

The Colombian government has now announced that it will begin the process of surgically sterilizing 40 hippos a year, in a last-ditch attempt to keep the population under control.

The government estimates that there are 169 hippos in Colombia, especially in the Magdalena River basin, and that if no action is taken, there could be more than 1,000 by 2035.

According to the BBC, Escobar's zoo also had elephants and giraffes, in addition to hippos.. After Escobar was shot dead by Colombian police in 1993, the government took control of the animals.

Some were moved to facilities around the world, but the hippos stayed behind and eventually escaped and readapted to the wildlife of the Colombian jungle.