Hippos Rampage in a Region of Colombia, Number Increasing 20-Fold in 20 Years; Researchers Issue Warnings
According to foreign media reports on January 31st, the former Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar’s hippos have become a disaster and caused serious damage to the local ecosystem.
It is reported that Escobar was one of the wealthiest criminals in history and once topped Forbes Magazine’s list of the world’s 7 richest people.
On his luxury estate 90 miles east of Medellín, he built a private zoo, which housed many rare exotic animals, including elephants, ostriches, rhinos, giraffes, zebras and hippos.
In 1993, Escobar died at the hands of the police, and the Colombian government seized his assets, and the animals he raised were donated to local and international zoos.
▲Pablo Escobar
However, due to the difficulty of capturing hippos, they were left in the local area.
After nearly 20 years of breeding, the four hippos from Escobar’s family have grown to 80 in scale and have spread to surrounding small lakes.
This also provides researchers with an observation object to study the impact of invasive species after the extinction of local animals of the same size.
In the study, scientists analyzed the changes in water quality and other environmental factors in the hippos’ presence area over two years, and they found that the hippos were changing the chemical composition and biological composition of the local lakes.
A researcher named Shilin said that if you calculate their breeding speed, you will find that they are growing at an exponential rate, and in the near future there will be thousands of hippos here.
She added: ‘How to deal with these hippos is indeed a dilemma for the Colombian government, on the one hand their presence has a significant promotion effect on the local tourism industry, on the other hand they are constantly exacerbating ecological destruction.’
