'The Hunt for Escobar's Hippos': Pablo Escobar's beloved imported animals are changing Colombia's ecosystem
In 1993, notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar was killed in a shootout with law enforcement. The narcoterrorist had massed an estimated net worth of $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 '80s and '90s.
In the 1970s, Escobar had bought a large estate that he used as a hideout. Called the Hacienda Napoles, he converted it into a theme park 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, which were illegally imported.
After Escobar's death in 1993, many of the animals were captured and shipped away to zoos. However, his beloved hippos — he had four, three females and one male, imported — were left behind in the compound. These hippos soon began to breed at an uncontrollable rate, and today, more than 80 hippos roam the Colombian wild lands, wreaking havoc in villages at night and threatening the ecosystem that feeds into the Magdalena River, Colombia’s main watershed.
Hippos are more dangerous than any other wildlife to humans in Africa and while they have not been fatal in Colombia yet, scientists worry it may only be a matter of time. Experts believe that the only way to deal with the hippos is the same way Escobar dealt with his enemies, however, it is illegal to cull the animals in Colombia where they are beloved by the people.
A new Smithsonian Channel special, 'The Hunt for Escobar's Hippos', follows Dr Gina Serna, a Colombian veterinarian who has been tasked with capturing and sterilizing them in order to control the hippo population in the country -- 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'.
While some studies show that the hippos may replace the extinct giant llamas in Colombia's ecosystems and make them look more like they did before humans arrived, the hippos are still alien species. Like extinct giant llamas and notoungulates, hippos are large grazing animals that can cause disturbance of soil, water, and plants in watery environments. However, they move nutrients in a different direction — from land into the water, instead of the other way around — and at a different rate than those extinct species.
Moreover, the hippos are causing another big problem — besides looming as a potentially huge threat to human lives in the area — they poop a lot. These hippos eat a lot on land and poop in the water. In their native Africa, where much of the climate is dry, this is not much of a big problem and can be beneficial, transporting nutrients like silicon from land into the water.
However, in the much wetter Colombia, the hippos are changing the biology of the lakes and the Magdalena River, with scientists finding higher levels of cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae in hippo-filled lakes. According to Jonathan Shurin, a biologist at the University of California, San Diego, this can lead to problems like eutrophication, or excess algae production that can lead to harmful algal blooms similar to red tides, and therefore affecting local marine life.
'The Hunt for Escobar's Hippos' airs on Smithsonian Channel on Wednesday, August 26 at 8/7c.