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Indian Tycoon Offers Refuge to Pablo Escobar’s Condemned Hippos

possible.” It proposed a “scientifically led translocation” of the animals to Vantara, in... Its critics in India call it a zoo. Mr. Ambani’s organization prefers the term “animal...

NYTIMES 입력 2026.04.29 21:28 0

Indian Tycoon Offers Refuge to Pablo Escobar’s Condemned Hippos

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Indian Tycoon Offers Refuge to Pablo Escobar’s Condemned Hippos

Colombia was planning to slaughter 80 hippopotamuses after a small herd imported in the 1980s by the drug lord grew out of control. An Indian tycoon has offered them a new home instead.

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Hippos descended from four imported by the drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in Colombia, in a 2023 photo.

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Raul Arboleda/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Alex Travelli

Reporting from New Delhi

April 29, 2026,

8:27 a.m. ET

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They are not known to have any taste for raw coca leaf. But the hungry hippos of Colombia’s Antioquia department have been rampaging through too much of the marshy flora that lines the waterways of the Magdalena River basin.

Colombia’s environment minister, Irene Vélez Torres, said that, left unchecked, they will keep procreating and destroy the local ecosystem: They are an invasive species from Africa, imported by Pablo Escobar, the world’s most notorious drug kingpin.

She released a proposal earlier this month to kill at least 80 of the animals later this year, after an

effort to sterilize the herd

, now about 200-head strong, proved disappointing.

Enter Anant Ambani, a scion of Asia’s richest family with a net worth greater than $100 billion. Alarmed by the proposed slaughter, he had his own private wildlife park in western India

offer

the hippos a new home, reflecting the “belief that every life matters and that we share a responsibility to protect life wherever possible.” It proposed a “scientifically led translocation” of the animals to Vantara, in Jamnagar, part of Gujarat state.

Vantara is a 3,500-acre wildlife sanctuary on the scrubby shoreline where the Ambanis have made a fortune operating

the world’s largest oil refinery

. Its critics in India call it a zoo. Mr. Ambani’s organization prefers the term “animal rescue, rehabilitation and conservation center.”

The project is so dear to him that his

pre-wedding festivities in 2024

, among the most eye-catching on earth, culminated in the boondocks of Jamnagar so that guests could be shown the grounds. Rihanna sang, while Mark Zuckerberg and other global CEOs and celebrities joined the party. Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India formally inaugurated Vantara a year later and Lionel Messi was brought in to participate in a Hindu ritual in December.

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