Colombia has started sterilizing the hippos descended from the four that drug lord Pablo Escobar left behind when he was killed in 1993—capping years of debate about how to cull the herd. “We are in a race against time in terms of permanent environmental and ecosystem impacts,” Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environmental minister, said in a statement, according to The New York Times. To sterilize the hippos, veterinarians have to immobilize the behemoths with sedative-filled darts and then perform the surgery on the spot.
