Billionaire’s Son Offers to Take Escobar Hippos
Hippos float in the lagoon at Hacienda Napoles Park, once the private estate of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara, File)
A wealthy Indian businessman is offering a new solution for Colombia’s growing hippo problem. Anant Ambani, the son of Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, has asked Colombian officials to hold off on plans to kill dozens of the animals and instead allow him to relocate about 80 of them to his wildlife facility in western India.
The hippos trace back to animals brought into Colombia during the 1980s by drug lord Pablo Escobar. Since then, they have spread along the Magdalena River, where their increasing numbers have led to attacks on residents and damage to local ecosystems. Because of these concerns, Colombia has classified them as an invasive species and has been weighing whether to cull part of the population. They remain the only wild hippos living outside of Africa.
Ambani’s proposal outlines a detailed relocation effort. His team says the animals would be captured, transported by air to the Indian state of Gujarat, and placed in a specially prepared environment near Reliance’s large Jamnagar refinery complex, an area known for extremely high summer temperatures. The plan, developed with veterinary oversight, emphasizes long-term care for the animals at the Vantara conservation center.
Mukesh Ambani, whose wealth is estimated at roughly 96 billion dollars, leads one of Asia’s largest business empires. His son’s project, Vantara, is promoted as one of the biggest wildlife rescue and conservation facilities in the world and already houses a wide range of species, including elephants, big cats, and crocodiles. However, its scale has also drawn criticism and protests from some experts and activists in India.
In Colombia, animal rights groups that oppose killing the hippos say they are open to relocation efforts. At the same time, they caution that the animals’ rapidly growing population continues to threaten native wildlife and river systems, making the situation increasingly urgent.
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