Plan is to ship 60 hippos to Gujarat, India, and one other 10 animals will go to zoos and sanctuaries in Mexico.

Colombia will switch 70 hippos as soon as owned by drug lord Pablo Escobar to abroad sanctuaries at a value of $3.5m.

The cocaine baron introduced a small variety of the African beasts to Colombia within the late Nineteen Eighties. However after his dying in 1993, the animals have been left to roam freely in a sizzling, marshy space of the Antioquia area the place environmental authorities have been helpless to curb their numbers – now at 150.

Escobar’s Hacienda Napoles and the hippos have turn out to be an area vacationer attraction since Colombian police killed the drug kingpin. When his ranch was deserted, the hippos survived and reproduced in native rivers and beneficial weather conditions. The hippos are territorial and weigh as much as three tonnes.

Scientists warn the hippos would not have a pure predator in Colombia and are a possible drawback for biodiversity since their faeces change the composition of the rivers and will have an effect on the habitat of manatees and capybaras.

Final yr, Colombia’s authorities declared the large animals a poisonous invasive species. Authorities tried a sterilisation programme to manage the inhabitants nevertheless it failed.

The plan is to ship 60 hippos to the Greens Zoological Rescue & Rehabilitation Kingdom in Gujarat, India, and one other 10 hippos will go to zoos and sanctuaries in Mexico such because the Ostok, situated in Sinaloa.

“The entire operation ought to value round $3.5m,” the Ostok Sanctuary’s proprietor Ernesto Zazueta advised reporters.

He and Governor Anibal Gaviria – of the Colombian area dwelling to the hippos – say they plan to lure the animals with bait into pens earlier than they’re put in particular crates for the switch.

The hippo elimination is seen as a life-saving measure because the atmosphere ministry eyed an eventual cull of the beasts. Ecuador, the Philippines, and Botswana additionally expressed willingness to take the hippos.

Escobar was one of many world’s most infamous outlaws, accountable for an unprecedented variety of drug-related deaths and a bomb assault in Colombia.

Escobar was killed in a rooftop shoot out with police and troopers in Medellin on December 2, 1993, in the future after his forty fourth birthday. 5 months earlier he appeared on Forbes journal’s listing of the world’s richest folks for the seventh time.