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'The Hunt for Escobar's Hippos': Colombian veterinarian Dr Gina Serna is on a mission to save these animals

Serna's specialty is the conservation of cougars and jaguars, however, she has become a local expert on hippos

Before Pablo Escobar was killed in 1993 in a shootout, he was a drug lord and a narcoterrorist who amassed an estimated net worth of US $30 billion by the time of his death — equivalent to $59 billion as of 2019 — while his drug cartel monopolized the cocaine trade into the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. Escobar's hideout was his theme park, Hacienda Napoles, a large estate in Colombia which included a Spanish colonial house, a sculpture park, and a complete zoo that included many kinds of animals from different continents such as antelope, elephants, exotic birds, giraffes, hippopotamuses, ostriches and ponies.

Escobar had illegally imported the animals to complete the zoo and he allowed Colombians to come to the zoo as visitors. However, after Escobar's death, many of the original buildings were demolished or repurposed, with most of the animals being captured. However, the hippos — which were just four when imported by Escobar from Africa — were too difficult to handle and broke out.

Today, breeding at twice their typical rate and with no natural predators keeping them in check, more than 60 roam the Colombian wilds, wreaking havoc in villages at night and threatening the ecosystem that feeds into the Magdalena River, Colombia’s main watershed. Hippos are today responsible for more human deaths in Africa than any other animal.

The endangered Magdalena river turtle and manatees have been displaced from the region because of the hippos that also erode grasslands where they forage. Columbian laws make it illegal to cull them. Colombian veterinarian Dr Gina Serna is tasked with capturing and sterilizing them — an operation extremely difficult to perform in the wild of Colombia.

Viewers will see Serna performing a tense surgery on a young hippo in the wild in Smithsonian Channel's 'The Hunt for Escobar's Hippos'. Serna grew up going to the zoo — in fact, her history is closely tied to Escobar himself. Her father was killed in an explosion orchestrated by Escobar in 1991. In February 1991, members of the Medellin cartel set off a car bomb at the La Macarena bullfighting ring in Medellin just as her parents were leaving the venue.

The target was a carload of National Police intelligence officers who were parked next to the building. A total of 22 people died in the explosion, including nine police officers and Serna’s father. Serna's cattle rancher father was the one who first took her to see the hippos cooling themselves in the artificial lakes of Hacienda Napoles when she was a child. Serna's specialty is the conservation of cougars and jaguars, however, she has become a local expert on hippos. 

The documentary captures a surgery Serna performed on a young hippo whose sex was unknown that her team christened Imbuvu. The team tracked her and her mother, then lured the two into a fenced-off pen by sprinkling carrots and shooting them with tranquilizers. When Serna starts the surgery, she realizes that the young hippopotamus is female, thereby complicating the surgery to sterilize it — the young hippo's ovaries may not have fully developed by then.

The result of the surgery can be seen in the documentary. 'The Hunt for Escobar's Hippos' airs on the Smithsonian Channel on Wednesday, August 26, at 8/7c.