What began as the eccentric whim of the most dangerous drug trafficker Colombia has had, the late Pablo Escobar, who 45 years ago brought several hippopotamuses to his famous Hacienda Napoles in Antioquia, has now turned into a serious problem because those dangerous animals native to Africa are already in four departments of the country, and they can expand even further. The capo brought four (one male and three females), but that population now approaches 200 individuals that have also been seen in Santander, Boyaca, and Bolivar.
They wander around damaging fences and farmers’ crops, killing livestock, crossing highways and railway lines, and even intimidating people. Incidents with the enormous pachyderms are increasingly frequent, and occur without the environmental authorities having been able to control either their multiplication or their expansion. They have colonized grasslands and swamps following the course of the Magdalena River, moving into any bend where they find the exorbitant quantities of food needed to sustain themselves. They are animals that measure up to 5 meters in length when fully grown and weigh between 2,000 and 3,000 kilos or much more.
The hippopotamuses have no known predators
The surprising adaptability of the hippopotamuses to the climate and environmental conditions of the Middle Magdalena has allowed that from the three females and one male that Pablo Escobar brought to the country in 1981 from a zoo in the United States, there are now at least 200, in what the newspaper El Colombiano, from Medellin, describes as exponential growth.
“This makes contact with people more frequent and the damage more noticeable, taking into account that each animal consumes, depending on its size, between 150 and 450 kilos of vegetation per day,” adds the same newspaper, and highlights that, in the same proportion, the beasts deposit “exorbitant quantities of fecal matter that damages water sources and changes the consistency of the soil, but also drives away other native species.”
All these circumstances favor the fact that the hippopotamuses have no known predators and to this is added “the mediocre performance of the State in controlling a foreign species that is threatening ecosystems and generating such drastic changes in the environment that there are no precedents related to any other species,” warns the newspaper.
The Regional Autonomous Corporation of the Basins of the Negro and Nare Rivers (Cornare), the highest environmental authority in eastern Antioquia, has described the hippopotamuses highlighting their dangerousness. They are territorial and aggressive animals, and it is estimated that they cause around 500 deaths per year in Africa. They are the largest invasive species and with the greatest potential for distribution throughout Colombia. This is mainly due to their great reproductive success and the fact that their populations are viable in Colombian ecosystems.
They can expand to as many as six departments
According to Cornare, the area currently occupied by the hippopotamuses is approximately 1,915 square kilometers, which could extend to 13,587 square kilometers, with a probability of presence and dispersion in the departments of Antioquia, Bolivar, Sucre, Santander, Boyaca, and Cundinamarca.
Due to the lethality of the hippopotamuses, the Secretary of the Environment of Barrancabermeja (Santander), Leonardo Granados, confirmed to El Colombiano that local authorities have taken the matter seriously after seeing the risk people face, especially children, if they approach the pachyderms thinking they are harmless species.
There is concern that the animals open their mouths to full capacity, a sign of irritability and that they would be willing to attack if someone stands in front of them. Granados said that they have tried to educate communities so they understand the magnitude of the issue and on several occasions they have had to drive the hippopotamuses back to nearby wetlands using the lights and sirens of police patrols.