Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Pablo Escobar still causing trouble....

Cocaine hippo's!!! Well, they don't eat cocaine, but they're still trouble:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...erd-dominates-nations-largest-river.html

Pablo Escobar's hippos are now ATTACKING people in Colombia: Drug kingpin's four pets have multiplied into 200-strong herd that dominates the nation's largest river

Descendants of illegal hippos imported to Colombia by Pablo Escobar in the 1980s have multiplied and started attacking people.

The hippopotamuses, which spread from the kingpin's private zoo into nearby rivers where they flourished, have no natural predators in the country and have been declared an invasive species which threaten the ecosystem.

Hacienda Nápoles became a tourist attraction after his death in 1993. Most of the animals live freely in rivers and reproduce without control, leading Colombia's Ministry of Environment to start sterilizing them in November.

'They're very, very dangerous. The hippos have started to attack people,' one local told Fox News.

Others branded the species as 'unpredictable' and 'aggressive', saying the best course of action if you come across one is to simply hide.

Meanwhile, Colombian environmental minister Susana Muhamad told the New York Times: 'We are in a race against time in terms of permanent environmental and ecosystem impacts'.

Two male hippos and one female underwent surgical sterilization in November, environmental authorities said.

It's part of a larger government effort to control the population of 169 of the mammals that roam around unsupervised in some rivers.

The plan includes the sterilization of 40 hippos a year, transfer some of them to other countries and possibly euthanasia.

Sterilization takes time, because spotting and capturing the territorial, aggressive three-ton animals is complicated, David Echeverry López, chief of the environment office in charge of the plan, said in a video distributed to the press.

Rain events around the area have complicated efforts to capture the animals. More grass means 'they have an oversupply of food, so baiting them to capture them becomes even more complicated,' Echeverry said.

The government estimates there are 169 hippos in Colombia, especially in the Magdalena River basin, and that if no measures are taken, there could be 1,000 by 2035.

When the plan was first announced, the environment ministry said the procedure is expensive - each sterilization costs about $9,800 - and entails risks for the hippopotamus, including allergic reactions to anesthesia or death, as well as risks to the animal health personnel.

Some of the animals were transferred to zoos following Escobar's death in 1993, while others fled and multiplied.

I know a cure for that.

Starts with ".375" and ends with "H&H"

How do they taste?

But first they have to spend $900 million on a sterilization campaign.

7.62x39 would much more practical and economical

I thought this was going to be about Stacy Abrahams.

They are an invasive species, and an incredibly destructive one.

A pile of pumpkins will interest them more than any grass. Save the ecosystem
,choot Lizabif choot!

Osky

It really ain't that hard to figure out........

Not quite as tasty as elephant... but more tender.

L.W.

It takes a government to take something so simple and make it slow, expensive and dangerous.

Sounds like Colombia made the mistake of listening to a Biden regime idea.

Seems there's money to be made if they'd like to get rid of a few. Enough to perhaps cover the sterilization of a few more. Could provide for a few jobs to keep some of those migrants home too???

https://www.africahunting.com/threads/average-hippo-on-land-prices-by-country.77909/

yeah, Let hope we don't start having that problem in the Mississippi and the Potomac....

Hippos are trouble anywhere. They don't need cocaine for attitude. I think they kill about 500 people annually in Africa. That's more than NA bears do in 100 years. Very territorial. They will run along the river bottom and attack boats from underneath. Never see them coming! They come out on land at night to graze, and people walk right into them in the dark.

I'd put them right up there with Nile crocs, but crocs only need to eat once or twice a year. Hippos don't even eat their kills.

Just googled. Hippos 500, elephants 500, crocs 1,000, lions 30

Yeah $10K to capture and sterilize each one, and oh, this is even better- "move some to other countries".

How much does a .375 round cost again? People would pay for that, and the meat would be useful in the slums, and poor villages. Like in Africa.

Funny stuff this is. Invasive species are not worthy of sympathy regardless of what or where they are. A few young men with proper rifles could fix this in a few days with minimal cost.

OTOH, Columbia could not pay me enough to go down there to solve this problem.

Wonder what the trophy fee will run?

I've read that hippos and crocs are tied for the most deaths in Africa for those killed by large animals. A hippo can run 20 mph and they're very aggressive.

Africa killers:
1. AIDS
2. Malaria
3. Hippos
4. Crocs

Government and their "solutions". lol

They could solve this rather quickly and easily AND make some coin.