A drug lord's four pets have grown to a herd of 200, controlling the country's largest river.

• In November, Colombia's Ministry of the Environment announced a plan to manage the population of 169 hippos, which pose a threat to the ecosystem.

Descendants of illegal hippos imported to Colombia by Pablo Escobar in the 1980s have begun to multiply and attack people.

Hippos have spread from Kingpin's private zoo to a nearby river where they have been breeding, but because they have no natural enemies in Japan, they are classified as an invasive species that threatens the ecosystem.

After Mr. Napoles' death in 1993, Hacienda Napoles became a tourist attraction. Colombia's Ministry of the Environment began sterilizing the animals in November, as most of the animals live freely in the river and reproduce uncontrolled.

“They are very, very dangerous. The hippos started attacking people,” one local resident told FOX News.

Others branded the species “unpredictable” and “aggressive” and said the best thing to do if you come across one is to simply hide.

Meanwhile, Colombian Environment Minister Susana Muhammad told the New York Times: “We are in a race against time in terms of lasting impacts on the environment and ecosystems.”

Two male and one female hippos were sterilized in November, according to environmental authorities.

This is part of a larger government effort to manage the populations of 169 mammal species that roam unsupervised in some rivers.

The plan includes sterilizing 40 hippos a year, transporting them to some countries and possibly euthanizing them.

David Echeverry López, director of the Environment Agency in charge of the project, said in a video distributed to the press that locating and capturing the territorial, aggressive three-ton animal would be complicated due to the infertility of the animal. He said the surgery would take time.

Efforts to capture the animal have been complicated by rain around the area. More grass “means there's an oversupply of food, so feeding and trapping becomes more complicated,” Etcheverry said.

The government estimates that there are 169 hippos in Colombia, particularly in the Magdalena River basin, and that the number could rise to 1,000 by 2035 if no action is taken.

When the plan was first announced, the Ministry of the Environment said the procedure was expensive, costing about $9,800 for one sterilization, and carried risks for the hippos, including allergic reactions to anesthesia and death. However, it also poses a risk to animal health personnel.

Nathalie Casblanco Martínez, an ecologist at Mexico's Quintana Roo University and lead author of the group's 2021 study, told The Associated Press at the time that the hippo crisis is “one of the biggest challenges for invasive species in the world.” ” he said. '

They suggested that some animals needed to be killed.

Experts say sterilizing hippos may not be enough to stop them from growing. In March, the government announced plans to move some of the animals to the Philippines, Mexico and India, with 60 of them being transferred.

“We are working on a protocol on the export of animals,” Mohammed said. “We do not intend to export a single animal unless we have permission from the other country's environmental authorities.”

Escobar used the wealth he earned from his transnational drug lord to establish his own zoo in Hacienda Napoles.

According to the book “Pablo Escobar, My Father,” written by his only son, Juan Pablo Escobar, local authorities in Puerto Triunfo were disappointed in his decision to build a zoo in the city because there was already one in Medellín. The plan has been canceled.

The feared drug lord discovers that his colleagues and cartel leaders Fabio Ochoa, Juan Ochoa, and Jorge Ochoa have a collection of exotic animals on their property, so he steals his zoo. I was also interested in creating.

So the Medellin cartel boss bought a collection of 1,900 exotic and wild animals from a Dallas zoo for $2 million.

The capo was upset by the fact that there was only one hippo (a male) and told his men that he needed more.

Pablo Escobar said, “Noah's ark is shaking so we have to buy a hippopotamus.'' “Call Miami and ask them to put a woman on a plane and send her right away.”

The zoo's collection of hippos now stands at four, including three females.

After Escobar's death in 1993, some animals were transferred to zoos, while others escaped and multiplied.