By Deutsche Welle
07 Sep 2024, 16:53 PM EDT
A Colombian court ordered “measures for the eradication” of more than 150 hippos descendants of a couple brought to the country in the eighties by the cocaine baron Pablo Escobar, that reproduce without control.
The Administrative Court of Cundinamarca (center) set a three-month deadline for the Ministry of Environment to issue “a regulation that includes measures for the eradication of the species,” which is affecting the “ecological balance”, according to the ruling published on its website.
The judges specified that the measures must include “controlled hunting and sterilization” of the hippos.
The Ministry had already announced at the end of 2023 a plan to sterilize part of the population of this invasive species and apply euthanasia to many others.
After several months had passed, Sterilizations are progressing slowly and the first euthanasia has not yet been recorded.
A plan to relocate them to Mexico, India and the Philippines also failed to materialize.
Animal rights activists oppose hunting
Hippos arrived in Colombia on the whim of Pablo Escobar who introduced a couple from Africa into his personal zoo at Hacienda Nápoles, in the Magdalena Medio region (north-central).
Following the police killing of the world’s largest drug trafficker in 1993 and the official seizure of his property, The mammals were left helpless and began to reproduceSome have attacked fishermen on the Magdalena River, the largest in the country.
At the end of 2023 there were 166 hippos and according to calculations by the Ministry of Environment By 2035 there could be 1,000 if their expansion is not stopped.
Experts say that the uncontrolled growth of its population threatens local species such as the manatee. But animal rights activists and workers in the tourism sector oppose the hunting of these pink-skinned giants.
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