(CNN) A hippo from the drug lord’s private menagerie Pablo Escobar has died in Colombia after being hit by a car, according to Colombian officials.
The hippo died on the spot, while the person in the car received medical attention from first responders, following a collision Tuesday night on a road between Medellín and the Colombian capital Bogota.
The officials said that “situations like this prove that the presence of hippos in the region is an environmental and social problem, which requires inter-institutional articulation to find comprehensive, deep, and timely solutions.”
Hippos were illegally brought to Colombia in the 1980s by Escobar as part of a collection of exotic animals he had amassed on his ranch about 250 kilometers (155 miles) from Medellín.
After his death in 1993, authorities relocated most of the animals, but not the hippos because they were too difficult to transport.
Hippos float in the lake at Hacienda Napoles Park, formerly the private estate of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, in a 2021 photo that does not include the hippo that died this month.
Since then, they have multiplied rapidly and there are now between 130 and 160 hippos, which have spread far from Escobar’s former ranch where they started as a population of one male and three females.
Recently declared an invasive species in Colombia, the threat of hippos to agriculture and human safety has been well documented in research, as has the effect of hippo waste on oxygen levels in water bodies, which can degrade the quality of water and cause the death of fish.
Authorities have tried to control animal population growth through sterilizations, contraceptive darts, and recently announced a $3.5 million plan to transfer 70 hippos to sanctuaries in Mexico and India.
It is impossible to transport hippos back to their native Africa because it risks destroying the local ecosystem there.
On Wednesday, the governor of Antioquia, Aníbal Gaviria, urged the national government to speed up its plan to transfer the hippos to sanctuaries in India and Mexico.