Despoiling of The Columbian Ecosystem: A legacy of Pablo Escobar
Hippos in Magdalena River, Columbia.
First published Oct. 1., 2024
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria (1949-1993) who amassed a fortune from cocaine smuggling and sales lived on an estate in Medellin, Columbia. He used his wealth to satisfy his interest in exotic animals, which led to his illicitly acquiring a menagerie including elephants, giraffes, zebras, ostriches and kangaroos, at his retreat near Doradal, just west of the Magdalena River. Colombian police killed him in Medellin in 1993. Locals tore the property apart in search of rumored caches of money and weapons. Afterward, the hacienda sank into ruin.
In 1998, the government seized possession on the property and eventually transferred most of the animals to zoos. Three female and one male hippopotamuses were too dangerous to move. No one anticipated the consequences. These enormous herbivores survived grazing grass and eating wild fruit and, since semi-aquatic, migrated to the Magdalena River and from there into the waterways of Columbia. Native to sub-Saharan Africa, they now have proliferated in the rivers, ponds, swamps, lakes, forests and roads of rural Colombia, an ecological disaster in the making. Mature female hippos can produce a calf every 18 months and they can give birth 25 times over their life span of 45 years. The dominant male forces other males to migrate and start their own herds taking over new territory.
How many hippos inhabit the rivers and lakes of the Magdalena Basin, covering 100,000 square miles and home to two-thirds of Colombia’s human population is uncertain but estimates of up to 200 have been made and it is predicted that by 2040, if breeding is not interrupted the population will grow to as many as 1,400. Hippos are considered among the most dangerous animal to humans with estimates in Africa of 500 human deaths a year. They attack farmers and enter other spaces, such as schoolyards. In Columbia, the hippos are trampling farmland, attacking cattle, menacing fishing boats and endangering drivers at night as they wander on roadways. Colombian scientists have warned about the looming impact on the region’s ecosystem. Columbia has great biodiversity but it has not evolved to support an enormous, semi-aquatic herbivore. For example, a single hippo produces up to 20 pounds of feces a day. In Africa, the dung provided nutrients for fish populations in rivers and lakes. Because of warming temperatures, water-intensive agriculture and increasing drought, the dung has accumulated to toxic levels in stagnating pools, killing off the same aquatic life that once benefited from it. Experts fear the same thing could happen in Colombia. Competition for food and space could displace otters, West Indian manatees, capybaras and turtles. An ecologist at San Diego State University’s Coastal and Marine Institute opined that Columbians should be worried.
Initially, the Columbian government decided to kill hippos but the reaction from the populace was so adverse that approach was stopped. Thereafter, a first-of-its-kind animal control program not to “cull” the hippos but to sterilize them was initiated. This surgical castration is complicated and expensive. The team has sterilized seven male hippos in three months. They estimate 40 castrations a year will be necessary to control the population.
After Escobar bought his 5,000-acre property near Doradal, as a retreat, he installed an airplane runway, a villa, heliports, aircraft hangars, horse stables, artificial lakes, a dinosaur theme park and a bullring. He had a staff of 1,000 people to run the hacienda. In the early 1980s, drawn to the symbolic power of wild beasts, he paid exotic animal breeders millions for the animals in his menagerie. Escobar opened his menagerie to the public as a way of making himself popular. Crowds stood in line for hours in the heat at the hacienda gates, waiting to board electric vehicles and bounce over the property past elephants, ostriches and other wild beasts. Escobar was a villainous man and murderer besides a cocaine trafficker. Additionally, he has left Columbia with a difficult environmental challenge.