The four hippopotamuses smuggled in by drug lord Pablo Escobar in the 1970s are now more than 130. They’re devouring plant life, crowding out native animals, polluting water and threatening people.
, the 500-pound black bear in Georgia that overdosed on Colombian powder tossed from a drug smuggler’s plane? These are Escobar’s cocaine hippos: bigger, more numerous, deadlier. The Environment Ministry here last year labeled them an “invasive species” and banned their reproduction and commercialization. But the debate over whether to conserve or kill them goes back decades.
Sixty are to be flown to the Greens Zoological Rescue and Rehabilitation Center in Gujarat, India. The rest are to go to the Ostok Sanctuary in Mexico. Ecuador, the Philippines and Botswana are lining up for future shipments.
At that point, the population was less than three dozen. But politicians dallied, and the numbers ballooned. Female hippos can birth one calf every two years. The population is reproducing faster than individuals have been sterilized.
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