{"id":634,"date":"2025-02-04T16:42:56","date_gmt":"2025-02-04T16:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/05\/conservationists-declare-its-finally-time-to-totally-eradicate-pablo-escobars-rampaging-hippos\/"},"modified":"2025-02-04T16:42:56","modified_gmt":"2025-02-04T16:42:56","slug":"conservationists-declare-its-finally-time-to-totally-eradicate-pablo-escobars-rampaging-hippos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/04\/conservationists-declare-its-finally-time-to-totally-eradicate-pablo-escobars-rampaging-hippos\/","title":{"rendered":"Conservationists declare it\u2019s finally time to totally \u2018eradicate\u2019 Pablo Escobar\u2019s rampaging hippos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>2024-07-05 13:17:15<\/b><br \/>\n<BR>Conservationists have declared the only \u201cresponsible thing\u201d to do with Pablo Escobar\u2019s rampaging hippos is to totally \u201ceradicate\u201d the beasts.<BR><br \/>\nAuthorities in Colombia are battling to find a solution of how to stop the feral mammals breeding \u2013 with the creatures leaving the country with the largest population of the 1.8 tonne animals outside of Africa. <BR><br \/>\nExperts admit the animals now represent a \u201cmajor problem\u201d that \u201cexceeds\u201d their ability to deal with them, and say a radical solution is now required.<BR><br \/>\nColombia\u2019s environment ministry is now finally considering a widespread sterilisation programme and locking the hippos in sanctuaries. <BR><br \/>\nIt comes as scientists warn they are a danger to native ecosystems as well as to rural communities. <BR><br \/>\nCarlos Valderrama, head of the WebConserva foundation, told The Times: \u201cWe don\u2019t want to slaughter hundreds of animals \u2013 nobody wants to see a killing of that scale, and for animal welfare reasons it\u2019s not the most advisable thing to do. <BR><br \/>\n\u201cThey put us in a difficult position in which we have to choose between the wellbeing of our ecosystems, of thousands of native animals, for some hippos that should not even be here. <BR><br \/>\n\u201cFrom an ecological point of view, the responsible thing to do is to eradicate these animals.\u201d<BR><br \/>\nDavid Echeverri Lopez who leads the Biodiversity Management Office of Cornare \u2013 a regional agency tasked with helping address the hippo problem \u2013 also warned in a chat with The Times: \u201cWe have a major problem that exceeds the administrative capacities to deal with it. There\u2019s quite a high level of complexity involved.\u201d<BR><br \/>\nStudies say if Escobar\u2019s beasts were allowed to continue reproducing at their current rate, Colombia could have more than 1,400 by 2034.<BR><br \/>\nHunters have failed to kill the drug lord\u2019s hippos and the castration solution has stalled. <BR><br \/>\nOne hippo called Napolitano was sedated, placed in a cage and flown by military helicopter to be castrated.<BR><br \/>\nBut when the helicopter\u2019s engine overheated due to his weight it only narrowly avoided crashing.<BR><br \/>\nAfter Escobar\u2019s death in a rooftop gunfight in Medellin in 1993 aged 44, his hippos were left to run wild at the cocaine baron\u2019s vast Hacienda Napoles private estate.<BR><br \/>\nBy 2009, the original four hippos imported by the drug titan to his estate in the 1980s had multiplied to about 27.<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/bangpremier.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> Visit Bang Premier (main website) <\/a><br \/>\n<br \/><script src=\"https:\/\/geo.dailymotion.com\/player\/xtbac.js\" data-video=\"\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2024-07-05 13:17:15 Conservationists have declared the only \u201cresponsible thing\u201d to do with Pablo Escobar\u2019s rampaging hippos is to totally \u201ceradicate\u201d the beasts. Authorities in Colombia are battling to find a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":635,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bizarre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":636,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions\/636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}