Colombia faces $3.5M cost to transfer Pablo Escobar’s ‘cocaine hippos’

The Colombian government is poised to spend $3.5 million to transfer about half of Pablo Escobar’s invasive “cocaine hippos” out of their country. Colombian officials said they are dealing with about 150 hippos, all descendants of one male and three females the late drug lord smuggled into the country in the 1980s. With no natural predators, the oversexed, three-ton herbivores have spread beyond Escobar’s 7,000-acre Hacienda Napoles property, nestled between Medellin and Bogota along the Magdalena River. Authorities have now set up plans to capture 70 of the hippopotamuses, sending...