Two hippos that once belonged to Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar have been saved from the firing squad, after a public outcry following the killing of another.
(photo: AFP/Getty images)
The first hippo, Pepe, was killed by government forces last month, meeting a fate similar to original owner Escobar, who was gunned down trying to escape arrest on a Medellin rooftop in 1993.
Pressure from animal rights campaigners and mounting public outrage has caused the environment ministry to accept a beer company’s proposal to send in African wildlife experts to help find an alternative solution for the two other hippos that remain in the wild near Escobar’s former estate.
Escobar, who Forbes magazine estimated in 1989 to be the seventh richest person in the world, had created a private zoo on his northern Colombian hacienda in Antioquia province during the height of his reign as the world’s most powerful cocaine dealer.
The zoo included elephants, kangaroos, alligators and rhinos, in addition to the four hippos that were introduced in 1981, according to the L.A. Times. The hippos thrived in the South American environment and began breeding.
When Escobar’s sprawling hacienda fell into government hands after his death, the estate, including a private “Jurassic park” stocked with dinosaur replicas, fell into disrepair. Most of the exotic animals were taken by zoos, but some hippos were left behind.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UHFHT1WhPc )
“Since this place was left alone and no one was taking care of it the electric fence stopped working. So [the hippos] started to break through the wire fences, because the barbed wire doesn’t stop them,” a ranger who managed the estate for a Colombian environmental agency told National Geographic.
Pepe and his mate, Matilda, were forced out off the ranch, and out of a herd that had grown to around 25 animals by 2007, following a confrontation with the group’s dominant male, according to Colombia Reports.
After that the pair started roaming the Magdaleno Medio river where they successfully bred in the wild. But nervous locals reported crop damage, flattened fences and the killing of livestock.
“There could be human losses, and I’m sure there will be, because they will take over the river as their territory,” veterinarian Maria Cecilia Campo told National geographic in a 2008 documentary.
The local authority had offered the hippos for free to anyone who was willing to capture and take them, but no institution or individual stepped up, according to the L.A. Times.
Finally an exection order for the “narco-hippos” was signed by the environment ministry, and Pepe was shot through the heart with a .374 caliber bullet on June 18th.
A public outcry was triggered nearly a month later, after a photograph emerged showing 15 beaming soldiers posing with their 2 tonne trophy-carcass.
“Pepe is a symbol of what’s going on in this country,” protester Santiago Rodriguez was quoted on Colombia Reports website. “We want to show people and the government that bullets are not the only way to solve a problem.”
“People think moving a hippopotamus from one place to another is like lassoing a cow…Colombia doesn’t have sufficient know-how to manage it,” Environment vice minister Claudia Mora told El Tiempo newspaper, in defence of the killing.
Even as protests mounted over the past week, the death warrant on the two remaining hippos at large stayed in place. Until Wednesday that is, when the government bowed to public pressure, and accepted an offer by a Bogata based brewery.
Beer company Bavaria, owned by SABMiller, offered to pay experts from South Africa and Tanzania to travel to Antioquia and help capture the beasts, Reuters reported.
“We have accepted Bavaria’s offer. The hunt is off,” environment ministry spokeswoman told Reuters. “The idea is to relocate the animals.”
