How Pablo Escobar's Pet Hippos Are Destroying the Colombian Ecosystem

Pablo Escobar may be gone, but his legacy remains to plague Colombia.

Escobar is known as Colombia's King of Cocaine. As one of the world's most prolific drug lords, the leader of Medellin cartel basically invented the modern-day drug business model which remains to be one of many countries' top socioeconomic problems.

Unknown to many, one of the gradeurs of being a drug kingpin is having a menagerie of exotic animals that he kept as pets. In the early 1980s, Escobar built an illegal zoo on his grand estate, Hacienda Nápoles, just under 100 miles east of Medellin estate. Escobar's private zoo seemed like a jungle as he smuggled some 200 animals into the country aboard his drug planes. This collection included ostriches, elephants, zebras, giraffes, camels, and hippos.

According to an article by Mitu, when Escobar was killed in 1993, the government siezed his estate, and now it serves as a safari theme park. Most of the animals from his collection were scattered to different zoos. However, four hippopotamuses were left behind to fend for themselves and apparently thrived on their own. By 2016, there were already 40 inhabiting the area. Recently, scientists have found that from four, their numbers have grown to around 80.

The drug lord reportedly bought the hippos from a zoo in California. These hippos bred to become the biggest wild hippo herd outside of Africa. While some of them remain in the theme park, some escaped through a flimsy gate and are now feral and causing damage in Colombian waters and prompting fear in locals.

A team of researchers from the University of California at San Diego teamed up with the Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia in investigating the water quality of the lakes where hippos live, and compared them to lakes where they are not.

Their study published in the journal Ecology said that the hippos have become an invasive species and are destroying the aquatic ecosystem due to their waste.

According to the study, hippos excrete large amounts of waste into the lakes which fertilize harmful algae and bacteria, thus, altering the chemistry and oxygen levels of the water.

Jonathan Shurin, lead author of the study, said these hippo species are having a major impact on the ecosystem in their native Africa. He added, they have seen a similar impact when they were imported to an entirely new continent.

Shurin said Escobar's hippos are also much more sexually active than their African counterparts because of the perfect conditions in Colombia such as shallow water and no drought.

BBC reported in 2014 that all the fertile females are giving birth to a calf every year. Meanwhile, an article by Britannica says that authorities are already castrating male hippos to control their population. This means that despite their efforts, the growth of the hippo population remains at a fast pace.

"If you plot out their population growth, we show that it tends to go exponentially skyward. In the next couple of decades there could be thousands of them," Shurin said.