Colombia considers exporting Escobar's hippos as population growing too quickly
Hippos float in the lake at Hacienda Napoles Park, once the private estate of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar who imported three female hippos and one male decades ago in Puerto Triunfo, Colombia. Picture: AP Photo/Fernando Vergara, File
The first time a hippo emerged from the trees, waddled cumbersomely across the grass and slid down the river bank into the murky brown waters of the Cocorná River, the fishermen in Las Angelitas froze in awe.
“We’d heard rumours of these hippos and seen footprints downriver but as we’ve never been to a zoo we’d never seen an animal like that in real life,” says Franki de Jesús Zapata Ciron.
