Next week, the Colombian authorities will sterilize one of the hippos that live in the country after being taken by drug trafficker Pablo Escobar, and that threaten the inhabitants and the ecosystem. In this way, the management plan drawn up to control this population is initiated, which will not only include sterilizations – 40 per year – but also transfer and ethical euthanasia.
This has been confirmed by the Colombian Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, Susana Muhamad, who has indicated that for the remainder of the year the projection is to sterilize 20 hippos, to go on to sterilize 40 a year starting in 2024. The plan for this invasive species was planned for 20 years, although Muhamad hopes that this time can be reduced by half.
Each sterilization costs 40 million pesos (9,320 euros) and is a “complex and expensive” operation: it can last between six and seven hours – if it is a female it is more complicated, according to experts – and it has risk for both the animals, the anesthesia process or complications that lead to death, as well as for the experts who carry out the process, Muhamad declared in a press conference.
Colombia has faced the problem of hippos for 30 years, when drug trafficker Pablo Escobar introduced them to the country as part of his private “zoo.” With his death, the individuals escaped and found a perfect habitat in Magdalena Medio, with all the food they need, a good climate and no natural enemies.
But they have become an “ecosystem engineer”, they have been expanding and are “territorial animals, with very high aggressiveness and a vector of diseases” for the local fauna. Right now the population is 169 pachyderms that live in an area of ??influence of about 48,000 hectares.
Together with the Regional Autonomous Corporation of the Black and Nare River Basins (Cornare), the Ministry of Environment will sterilize the first individual next week, “but it will not be enough, we cannot control the population with sterilization alone,” he said. commented Muhammad.
That is why the transfer is also part of the plan – there is a studied and advanced offer from India to take 60 hippos – and also “ethical euthanasia.” “None of the three is effective on its own,” but it is important that they be carried out simultaneously, the minister said.
“We seek to control the expansion of the population and keep them in closed nuclei” so that, over time, when they stop reproducing they become extinct on their own in the country, especially because “we are in a race against time in terms of environmental and ecosystem impacts,” he added.
They also have an impact on the communities that live with them. Last April, a hippopotamus died after he crashed into a vehicle while traveling on a highway, leaving two people injured.
