Colombian authorities are moving forward with procedures to send 70 hippos to wildlife sanctuaries in India and Mexico, in an operation that will cost US$3.5 million (R$17.8 million) and lessen the damage caused by the trafficker’s legacy Pablo Escobar.
Ever since the cocaine baron brought some of these animals to his farm in the department of Antioquia in the late 1980s, the herd has reproduced without control due to the impotence of environmental authorities.
“The complete operation should cost around US$ 3.5 million”, Ernesto Zazueta, owner of the Sanctuary of Ostok, in northern Mexico, told the press, where ten of these huge mammals would be housed.
The transfer aims to “save the lives” of animals native to Africa, declared an invasive species by the Colombian Ministry of the Environment last year, which opened the door to possible hunting.
According to Aníbal Gaviria, governor of Antioquia, where the herd of about 150 individuals is located, there is only one kind of “hippopotamus passport, which will be issued by the Ministry of the Environment”. The goal is to transfer them “in the first half of this year”, said Gaviria.
After Escobar’s death in a police operation in 1993, the animals were left to their own devices and gradually populated the Magdalena Medio region, a hot savanna intersected by rivers and swamps.
Gaviria and Zazueta plan to bait them in pens, where they will be confined before being placed in special crates for air transport to the sanctuaries.
“The next step is hiring the planes and building the grids […] We’re going to start in India, then we’re going to Mexico,” explained Zazueta, president of the Association of Zoos, Hatchery and Aquariums of Mexico.
The majority, 60 specimens, will go to an unnamed wildlife sanctuary in India.
The government tried an unsuccessful sterilization program to control the population.
Experts and the area’s environmental authority (Cornare) agreed that hunting was “a necessary option” given the threat the animals pose to the local population and fauna.
“Here we are in the quest to save the lives of hippos, but also to protect the lives of people in Magdalena Medio […] it is a risk to people’s peace and life,” the government explained in a bulletin.