The death this week, run over, of one of the 170 hippos that roam freely in the Magdalena river basin, in Colombia, has once again put on the table the fastest and most effective option to control this invasive species: hunting them.
The measure is one of the proposals established by an academic report commissioned by the Ministry of the Environment to put an end to the problems that these mammals represent for native fauna and humans. The study has been carried out by researchers from the Humboldt Institute, the National University and the Regional Autonomous Corporation of the Negro and Nare rivers (Cornare).
These wild animals descend from three specimens – two males and one female – illegally imported in the eighties by the late drug trafficker Pablo Escobar for the private zoo that was set up on his Antioquia farm, the Hacienda Nápoles.
The regional government of Antioquia promotes the transfer of 10 hippos to Mexico and 60 to India. He also wanted to take another two to Ecuador, but the authorities of the neighboring country have already denied that possibility.
The shipment to a Mexican animal sanctuary – at a cost of close to 3.5 million euros – is pending authorization from the central government, but it will not solve the problem anyway: another study anticipates that, if nothing is done, Within ten years the population of hippos in Colombia would be around 1,500 specimens.
This week's report offers two alternatives for hunting and killing hippos: by shooting or concussing them, or by euthanizing them by administering drugs. This would be the fastest option for its eradication, although the study also proposes other options such as transfer to zoos and sanctuaries or confinement in Colombia until its natural death. Instead, environmentalists defend continuing with sterilization, which has already been applied to several specimens.
So far, only thirty of these animals are controlled, as they are the only ones that live inside the Hacienda Nápoles, today converted into a theme park. The rest of the hippos is the product of their free reproduction in the Magdalena basin, from specimens that escaped from the old Escobar farm, in the town of Puerto Triunfo, which was abandoned after the fall and death, at the hands of a police command, of the boss of the Medellín cartel in 1993.
The plague of hippos – which measure between three and five meters and weigh about 1,500 kilos – led to an accident on Tuesday on the Bogotá-Medellín highway, near the Hacienda Nápoles, when one of these animals crossed the road and was hit by a car, which was destroyed and its two passengers slightly injured.
