Pablo Escobar was a notorious Colombian drug lord who turned one of the wealthiest and most powerful criminals in historical past: he was also an animal lover.
During his heyday within the 1980s, he famously owned a big collection of exotic animals, including elephants, giraffes, and hippopotami. If Escobar was an issue for the authorities when he was alive then so are his remaining hippos.
After he died in 1993, his collection of 70 African hippos had been left to roam free in the Antioquia area of Colombia, inflicting an ecological drawback for the nation. Now, the Colombian authorities plans to relocate the hippos to overseas sanctuaries at a value of US$3.5m, reported Aljazeera.
Escobar’s Hacienda Napoles, where the hippos lived, has turn out to be a vacationer attraction since his demise. However, the hippos’ presence has led to issues over their impression on the environment. The hippos are a territorial species, weighing as much as three tonnes, and wouldn’t have pure predators in Colombia. Their faeces change the composition of rivers, which may affect the habitat of manatees and capybaras.
To address the difficulty, final yr the Colombian authorities declared the hippos a poisonous invasive species and attempted a sterilisation programme to control their inhabitants, nevertheless it failed. The plan nows to relocate 60 of the hippos to the Greens Zoological Rescue & Rehabilitation Kingdom in Gujarat, India, and another 10 to zoos and sanctuaries in Mexico.
Ernesto Zazueta, the proprietor of the Ostok Sanctuary in Sinaloa, Mexico, one of the destinations for the hippos, said…
“The complete operation ought to value around US$3.5m.”
The hippos might be lured into pens before being placed in special crates for transportation.
The relocation is seen as a necessary measure to save lots of the hippos’ lives and defend Colombia’s biodiversity. Otherwise, the surroundings ministry would have needed to consider culling the animals. Other international locations, similar to Ecuador, the Philippines, and Botswana, have expressed their willingness to take the hippos.
Child’s play of his hippos is now within the palms of animal welfare activists and government officials who hope to make sure their safety and protect the setting.
Escobar engaged in a shootout with police and soldiers on a rooftop, which led to his demise on December 2, 1993, in Medellin. He was forty four years outdated on the time, having celebrated his forty fourth birthday simply one day prior. Interestingly, 5 months earlier than his demise, he had been listed in Forbes magazine’s ranking of the wealthiest individuals in the world for the seventh time..