They were two female hippos and one male when the drug trafficker Pablo Escobar brought them to Colombia in a private plane to the Rionegro airport and transferred them to the Hacienda Nápoles.
It was in the 1980s. Four decades later, this criminal version of Noah's Ark is a weighty social and ecological problem for Colombia.
The so-called Escobar hippos, an invasive and dangerous species, have reproduced in such a way that there are now about 160 animals free in the Magdalena river basin that connects six departments.
The inheritance left by the drug trafficker has transcended criminality and has environmental and social effects that could worsen over the years.
The country has spent years debating whether to sterilize or kill them, while hippos continue to wreak havoc and accidents with humans.
Governments have had all kinds of approaches from inaction that has allowed them to reproduce, to chemical castration or hunting, as happened with the famous hippopotamus Pepe —killed in 2009— going through releasing them through the river basins.
Now, a new solution has been proposed that sounds as cinematic and titanic as it was to bring them that time in the 80s.
Children walk to their school, near Parque Nápoles, in February 2020. IVAN VALENCIA (AP)
The Antioquia authorities announced that they will try to transfer at least 70 hippos to India and Mexico and hope to also reach agreements with Ecuador, the Philippines and Botswana, which also want to receive some of them.
60 would be taken to the Greens Zoological Rescue and Rehabilitation Kingdom in Gujarat (India) and another 10 to the Ostok Sanctuary in Culiacán (Mexico).
But the news has triggered many questions.
Who pays it?
How is such a transfer done with animals that weigh a ton?
How will they avoid transferring the problem of reproduction to those countries?
From the Government of Antioquia they explain that they have all the logistics ready, although they still lack the authorization of the Government of Gustavo Petro.
The history of this alternative arose a year and a half ago from the hand of Ernesto Zazueta, president of Ostok, and involves three countries: Mexico, India and Argentina, the latter because a producer from there would document the transfer.
With the resources of the production of the Impossible Loads program, the crates where the hippos must be locked up for their trips would be paid, says the Government.
Zazueta is also the liaison with India and has promised to receive 10 in his Mexican sanctuary.
The news is for now an announcement because the authorization of the Ministry of the Environment is still missing.
Although Lina Marcela Ríos, manager of Animal Protection of the Antioquia Governor's Office, says that they are making progress.
The official also assures that, once they have the license, the entire process would take two months.
But that is precisely what worries biologists and experts who have studied hippos in the country the most and consider that it is much more cumbersome and slow than what the regional government says.
A hippopotamus is fed carrots in Naples Park.picture alliance (picture alliance via Getty Image)
"The most expensive thing is air transport and crates, money that India would put up," Ríos explains in conversation with EL PAÍS.
But before the air transport, which is already complex, is the capture of the animals.
Ríos says that they will do it by baiting carrots at night, a job that Colombia does.
"The national and local government," she says, adding that this work costs 600 million pesos, including the human resources that would make the capture.
However, the animals would not travel sterilized.
“Birth control and containment processes must be assumed by the country of destination, they are very expensive.
We cannot do sterilization”.
The option of taking them abroad is a regional measure that would not solve the problem that has spread to other departments, says Nataly Castelblanco, doctor in Ecology and Sustainable Development.
In 2021, she carried out the scientific study published in the journal
Biological Conservation
, which maintains that by 2034 the hippo population in Colombia could exceed 1,400 specimens.
She now considers that it was a conservative prediction, "according to the latest analyzes the reproduction rate is 15% and 48% are pups and juveniles," she adds.
The research, which drew the ire of the animal movement, notes that "in the absence of intense culling or hunting pressure, population sizes will continue to increase steadily."
They have called her an alarmist, but she considers it necessary to continue insisting.
“If the problem is not solved now and the inaction of the Government continues, the growth and threats to the swamps and to the people will continue,” she says.
Hippos can lead to the extinction of local ecosystems where they move and make changes to the vegetation that are irreversible, also indicates Rafael Moreno, doctor of Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
A kingfisher in the Claro river in Puerto Triunfo, one of the species that lives with hippos. Fernando Vergara (AP)
The effects on ecosystems are only one of the edges of the problem;
another is the impacts on people.
In Africa, 500 deaths caused by hippos are recorded every year.
In Colombia, despite the growth of this population and the fact that these are aggressive and territorial animals, considered the most dangerous on the planet, there has been luck.
All the experts who have followed the progress of the problem are waiting for the Ministry of the Environment to publish a report on the matter.
In recent years there have been three accidents involving humans.
In one of them, the person received a bite and was left with psychiatric problems;
in another the victim was a man who wanted to steal a calf to sell it and was attacked by the female;
and the best known was in a road accident.
The hippopotamus is the third largest land animal and can weigh up to three tons, so meeting one can be deadly.
Most of the inhabitants of Doradal (Antioquia) know about the dangers of coming across these animals, but in that region there is an ambivalent relationship with them.
They love them, they worship them, they fear them.
For many, they have become a source of income through tourism.
Hippos have become almost a mythical character that recalls the permanent and heavy presence of drug trafficking.
However, as David Echeverri, head of the diversity management office of the regional environmental conservation entity, Cornare, affirms, people "do not measure" the dire consequences of these animals.
“Since there have been no deaths, people continue to have a positive perception of hippos and are not pushing for more drastic measures.
But, once a fatal accident occurs, that will change,” warns Echeverri, who has been capturing and sterilizing hippos in Antioquia for 10 years.
A hippopotamus in the street of Parque Nápoles.Sinikka Tarvainen (Getty Images)
Sanitary sacrifice or euthanasia of these animals is not out of the equation.
Although the debate with the animal movement that has representation in Congress is strong.
In 2009, the polarization reached its peak when Pepe, the first hippopotamus in the herd, was killed.
He was killed by shots from German hunters, accompanied by the Army.
The photograph of the group with the corpse of the animal as a trophy generated rejection and recalled that of Escobar himself dead on a roof in Medellín.
It cannot be a basic solution
Relocation abroad cannot be the only option to handle the problem, nor can it be presented as a panacea, insist the experts Casteblanco and Echeverri.
“This is not the basic solution, but it can help reduce the problem.
Relocating them to zoos with management guarantees has been raised as a possibility and an alternative to castration and sterilization”, says the Cornare official.
A girl poses for a photo in the mouth of a hippopotamus statue in Parque Nápoles. Fernando Vergara (AP)
Moreno, who conducted research on effects between hippos and humans for the Humboldt Institute, agrees.
“It all adds up, but I am quite skeptical that that number of animals can be moved under conditions that respect international measures,” he says.
He clarifies that the hippos would have to arrive surgically castrated.
"They can't take that time bomb to Mexico and Gujarat."
In recent years, Cornare has sterilized 13 hippos and rehomed five to zoos across the country.
But they know that capturing 70 and locking them in pens is unprecedented.
“It is a population group of 80 in the area.
Is not easy;
not impossible either, ”he adds.
Of course, it will not be so easy with the hippos that have advanced through the Magdalena River.
That is why Castelblanco says that the Minister of the Environment, Susana Muhamad, must present a national plan to address this problem.
“It is no longer something just for Antioquia, but a national problem.
The issue of the hippos got out of hand a while ago, ”she says, and considers that the move abroad alleviates, but does not solve the problem.
Forty years after Escobar smuggled these animals in, Colombia still doesn't quite know what to do to stop them.
Like drug trafficking, they continue to reproduce.
Hippos in Nápoles Park, formerly a farm, in Puerto Triunfo in 2020. Ivan Valencia (AP)
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