Journalist Joshua Hammer–author of a captivating piece in the current issue of Smithsonian Magazine, entitled “Pablo Escobar’s Abandoned Hippos are Wreaking Havoc in the Columbian Jungle”—recalls how, having been casually aware of the Escobar/hippo situation, he decided to deeply delve into what turned out to be a more complex, colorful saga than anyone could’ve reasonably anticipated.
Recognizing those listening would need to be of a certain vintage to be conversant with Pablo Escobar—a Columbian drug lord whose cocaine business flourished in the 1980s and early 1990s (he died in 1993)—I asked Hammer to provide an overview of Escobar.
Drug lords tend to buy certain things with their wealth—houses, cars, boats—but Escobar additionally bought a bunch of exotic animals in order to create his own private zoo. Hammer describes Escobar’s critter-shopping, noting that part of his attraction to hippos was that the drug baron wanted his menagerie to solely house herbivores.
Another hippo attribute—this one less known, but central to the immense problems the Smithsonian article spotlights—is they’re prolific breeders. Their normal stomping grounds are sub-Saharan Africa, and it’s thought that Escobar initially brought in 4 hippos (3 females, 1 male) to help launch his Columbian jungle zoo. Hammer reported, and reviewed in our conversation, that a government count last year estimated the population at 169, while another expert Hammer spoke with suggested that number was closer to 200. Biologists project the hippo tally in 2040—if the breeding is unchecked—will be around 1400. That’s a giant number of giant animals—a gargantuan invasive species, in every sense.
There’s more than a little discussion—both in Hammer’s piece and my conversation with him–of efforts to control, and reduce, the hippo population, culminating in an initiative to perform surgical castration. That’s not only a complicated procedure, but also one quite risky for both human and hippo, and for those reasons, is making only a small dent thus far in the neutering required to truly decrease the populace.
We wrap up the chat asking Hammer for a bit of prognostication, assessing what the future holds for the Escobar hippos as their numbers continue to expand, while humane solutions for curtailing that expansion—and probably the patience of government officials—dwindle. His prediction is grim.
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