Pablo Escobar’s Hippos Continue Causing Problems 33 Years After Pablo Escobar Stopped

COLOMBIA — More than three decades after Pablo Escobar died, Colombian authorities are still attempting to clean up after him.

This time, the problem weighs several thousand pounds, spends much of the day in a river and can run significantly faster than a person who has just realized Colombia should not naturally contain hippopotamuses.

The Colombian government announced April 13 that it plans to begin euthanizing approximately 80 invasive hippos during the second half of 2026 as part of an expanded effort to control a population descended from animals illegally imported by Escobar for his private zoo during the 1980s.

Colombia now has roughly 200 hippos living around the Magdalena River region, according to the government estimate reported by Reuters. Without stronger population control, officials warned that their numbers could reach 1,000 by 2035.

Four hippos went in.

An ecological problem came out.

Pablo Escobar had assembled an exotic private menagerie at Hacienda Nápoles, importing animals including hippos as monuments to the traditional drug-lord virtues of wealth, restraint and respect for customs regulations. After Escobar’s death in 1993, many of the estate’s exotic animals could be removed.

The hippos presented a more complicated proposition because they are essentially amphibious pickup trucks with opinions.

The descendants escaped or spread into the surrounding watershed, where Colombia’s warm climate, abundant water and absence of African predators provided unexpectedly comfortable conditions for reproduction. Earlier government control efforts included sterilization and proposed international relocation.

The result is one of conservation biology’s more uncomfortable lessons:

An animal can be magnificent and still be in the wrong damn continent.

Hippos are considered vulnerable within their native range, yet in Colombia they constitute an introduced invasive population capable of damaging an ecosystem that did not evolve around them. Colombian officials say their expansion threatens native wildlife including river turtles and manatees and contributes to water-quality problems.

Nature does not award diplomatic immunity because an invasive species is charismatic.

That creates an unusually miserable conservation dilemma.

A feral hog invading an ecosystem receives relatively little international fan mail.

A two-ton hippopotamus with tiny ears looks like somebody enlarged a bathtub toy.

One is therefore easier to discuss killing on television.

Colombia’s plan carries a budget of approximately 7.2 billion pesos, or about $1.98 million, and does not consist solely of euthanasia. Officials also intend to use confinement and relocation where feasible. The government had approached eight countries—including India, Mexico, the Philippines, Ecuador, Peru and South Africa—about potentially transferring animals to zoos or sanctuaries, but Reuters reported that the necessary approvals had not yet materialized.

The animals have also developed another legacy of their improbable origin.

Because the Colombian population descends from only a tiny founder group, officials reported genetic defects associated with inbreeding, which has made some institutions less interested in accepting relocated animals.

Even the hippos have now discovered the disadvantages of a closed social circle.

The decision to euthanize animals remains controversial. Animal-welfare advocates have argued that killing the hippos punishes animals for a problem created entirely by humans, while conservationists counter that delaying control allows the population to grow larger and ultimately makes the eventual intervention more destructive. Reporting from Colombia described that division clearly: scientists and environmental authorities have defended lethal control as increasingly necessary, while opponents consider it unnecessarily cruel.

Both sides possess an uncomfortable piece of the truth.

The hippos did nothing morally wrong.

They also do not belong there.

An invasive species is not evil. It is simply successful in an ecosystem unprepared to contain it.

Humans introduced the animals, allowed the population to establish itself, spent decades arguing over what to do, developed an emotional attachment to the resulting absurdity and then discovered that postponing an unpleasant decision had produced an even larger unpleasant decision.

So, normal government.

Sterilization sounds like the obvious humane alternative until somebody has to anesthetize, transport and perform surgery on a territorial animal weighing several thousand pounds. Colombian authorities have experimented with both surgical and chemical sterilization, but previous reporting found the process expensive, hazardous and too slow by itself to keep pace with the growing population.

Relocation sounds better until somebody has to find an overseas institution willing to receive dozens of genetically bottlenecked hippos, complete the veterinary and international paperwork, transport them safely across continents and fund the operation.

And simply leaving them alone is how Colombia acquired approximately 200 hippos from four.

The dilemma becomes stranger still because the animals have become part of local identity and tourism. Something introduced through the vanity of one of history’s most notorious cocaine traffickers has, through sufficient passage of time, become scenery.

There is probably a lesson about culture in there.

There is definitely a lesson about biosecurity.

Escobar built his private zoo as another monument to enormous wealth and personal power. He could purchase animals from another continent, put them on an estate and apparently assume the consequences ended at the property line.

They did not.

The cocaine empire collapsed.

The mansion became a tourist attraction.

The man himself was killed.

The hippos kept breeding.

For all his money, weapons, enemies, political influence and mythology, one of Pablo Escobar’s longest-lasting contributions to Colombia may ultimately be a herd of enormous African mammals that environmental officials are still trying to figure out what to do with in 2026.

There are worse arguments for thinking beyond the quarterly report.

Pablo just happened to leave his in the river.