Anant Ambani, a director at Reliance Industries and son of Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, has pleaded with Colombia's government to suspend a planned cull of 80 hippos descended from animals brought to the country by drug lord Pablo Escobar, offering to relocate them to his Vantara wildlife centre in Gujarat.

Colombia's environment ministry authorised the euthanasia of 80 animals earlier this month as part of a broader population control strategy. Officials estimate that without intervention, the population — currently around 200 animals living wild along the Magdalena river — could reach 1,000 by 2035. Authorities previously assessed relocation and sterilisation but found them impractical, citing a shortage of willing recipient countries and limited effectiveness in slowing reproduction.

The cull, budgeted at COP7.2bn (around $2mn), would mark the most decisive state action yet on a problem that has confounded successive Colombian governments for more than a decade, and follows a 2024 ruling by the Administrative Court of Cundinamarca ordering the environment ministry to draft regulations aimed at eradicating the species.

The origins of the problem trace back to Escobar himself, who in the 1980s smuggled four hippos into his private zoo at his Hacienda Nápoles estate in the Magdalena Medio. After the drug kingpin was killed by security forces in 1993 and his ranch was ransacked, the animals escaped and began reproducing unchecked. With no natural predators, the population has expanded exponentially. Efforts at containment have repeatedly faltered: a government attempt to cull a single hippo in 2009 triggered a public backlash, and hunting was formally banned in 2012.

Ambani outlined a plan involving veterinary-led capture, transport and the construction of a dedicated habitat at Vantara, which houses hundreds of elephants as well as 160 tigers, 200 lions, 250 leopards and 900 crocodiles, according to India's Central Zoo Authority. "These 80 hippos did not choose where they were born," he said, adding that Vantara had the capacity to support the transfer under Colombia's conditions.

The expanding population poses escalating risks to native biodiversity. A 2022 assessment by Colombia's Instituto Humboldt found that hippos are altering freshwater ecosystems along the Magdalena, disrupting aquatic life and threatening species including river turtles and manatees. Nutrient loading from hippo waste increases algal blooms and depresses oxygen levels in rivers and wetlands, with knock-on effects for fisheries that support local economies. Although hippos kill hundreds of people annually in Africa, Colombia has recorded no fatalities, though confrontations with fishermen along the Magdalena have been reported.

Colombia's recent announcement has reignited a long-running dispute between conservation scientists and animal rights advocates. The former broadly support culling as a necessary population management tool, while the latter argue the crisis reflects decades of policy failure and raises unresolved questions about the ethics of lethal control.

The Colombian government had not publicly responded to Ambani's proposal at the time of publication.