A hippopotamus owned by Pablo Escobar died after being run over on a Colombian highway

One of the hippos of the drug dealer Pablo Escobar died Tuesday night in Colombia after causing an accident that left two people injured when a vehicle collided with the animal while traveling on a highway.

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The collision occurred on the road that connects to Medellin with Bogotaat the height of the municipality of Puerto Triunfoin the department of antiochwhere a large group of hippos live that were born in the center of the country after the boss brought the first four in 1984 to his recreational farm.

The head of the office Biodiversity Management of the Regional Autonomous Corporation of the Negro and Nare River Basins (Cornare), David Echeverri Lopezreported this Wednesday that the animal “died immediately after the accident, which did not cause serious injuries.

He specified that a technical team of wildlife from Cornare traveled to the area last night to attend to the situation, move the hippopotamus corpse, make the respective evaluations, take samples and “analyze what is going to be a research product”.

“This is one of the dangers that the presence of this species represents. Many of them cross the highway through which many vehicles pass. It is also a danger to the people in the area. Hippos are unpredictable, at any time they can attack a person with the erratic behavior that they normally exhibit.” Echeverri assured.

The expert recalled that hippos that “roam free” for the region of Middle Magdalena and the Magdalena River They are part of a collection of animals that arrived illegally in the country and that have been reproducing for more than thirty years.

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PLAYBACK WITHOUT CONTROL

At the height of his criminal empire, Escobar built a zoo with exotic animals at his Hacienda Nápolesof almost 3,000 hectares, located precisely in Puerto Triunfo, where the most recent incident with this species occurred.

After the fall of the drug lord in 1993, and with the end of his drug cartel, the hippos were left without control and quickly got used to the environment due to the favorable conditions of the land, irrigated by the waters of the Magdalena river.

However, the exotic pachyderms, which already exceed 150 specimens, over time became a danger to the fauna, flora and inhabitants of the region, so in 2022 the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development included the hippopotamus. (hippopotamus amphibius) in the list of invasive alien species of Colombia.

Echeverri pointed out that the Hacienda Nápoles Theme Parkold estate of escobarcurrently has in his “collection plan” only three hippos, which are under care, with “safety” and “well-being”.

The problems in the area are caused, according to the expert, by a “very large” population of these animals that settled in a lake near Naples, “The largest group of hippos that are breeding out of control, and resulting in other small groups that sometimes fight for leadership of the herd to go out and colonize other places.”

Colombian authorities presented a plan in March to move to Mexico and India to at least 70 of these heavy and dangerous animals, as a measure to curb the impacts of their accelerated reproduction.

Source: Elcomercio

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I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.