Update: Pablo’s hippos

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Nearly a year ago, the municipality of Puerto Triunfo, Colombia, where the late drug trafficker Pablo Escobar built his sprawling Hacienda Napoles pleasure palace, issued a worldwide plea for someone, anyone, to take the farm’s 16 hippopotamuses off its hands. The town wants to remove them from the lake Pablo built for them so it can open an aquatic and wild animal theme park next month. The hippos are all that are left of the wild animal park Pablo built to entertain his family and friends.

But there have been no takers, partly because of the logistical problem posed by the capture and transfer of the fiercely territorial beasts, which weigh as much as 2 tons. So the town has resigned itself to moving them on its own, to an as yet undetermined location, leaving only three at the new park. As a prelude to moving them, the town and the regional environmental agency are trying to determine how many of the huge beasts live at the park. Since last year, officials say, several baby hippos have been born, offsetting the three males that officials say have fled, chased out by the herd’s dominant male. Two of the them were spotted over the summer more than 100 miles up the Magdalena River, presumably looking for mates. The study will also determine the grazing habits of the animals, possibly to determine the optimal time for a capture.

Posted by Chris Kraul and Jenny Carolina Gonzalez in Bogota