I know. Please see post #15. 
Since the Mexicans have displaced the Columbians, the cartels should be obliged to take the hippos. It could well work in their favor: imagine all the product a hippo could keister through customs.
If you’re joking, rather than just saying something stupid, it’s best to indicate that fact (especially in the Pit).
You can lighten up better than that, Francis!
You want people to lighten up in the Pit? You’re in the wrong place.
RINOs are hated by all in Texas.
This thread is to the BBQ Pit Forum as the Hippo is to South America.
Well now I feel like a hippocrite.
Can we import a few more from Africa to smooth out the gene pool?
Actually I think it’s kind of cool. If they’re permanent, it lowers the risk of extinction.
Next, release some Elephants in the same area. 
Me too. I thought maybe it was slang for American tourists recruited to bring things over the border.
They should import hyenas to eat all the hippos. Then they should import gorillas to eat the hyenas. After that, it’s just a matter of waiting for winter, when all the gorillas will freeze to death. Problem solved!
Dude, it’s Colombia. You plop down 10.000 to shoot at a hippo, a thousand coked out School of the Americas alumnis are already buying newspapers in bulk for your ransom notes.
There are already crocodiles in the river as well as jaguars living in the area. Besides, they’re only likely to go after a baby hippo. Full-grown hippos are practically invincible. And mother hippos will defend their calves.
Pfft! That’s not so, else Dewhurst, Cornyn, Perry, and a bunch of others’d be out of jobs by now.
Re Kobal’s post, since I can’t multi-quote on this tablet, Colombia’s supposed to be a lot less lawless and kidnapp-y now, than they were around 2000 or so. The solution, as in other 3rd World environs, is to hire a reputable outfitter/fixer/“combat accountant” to smooth the ways.
On lepto, I’d love Colibri, or another scientist to opine, but isn’t it a danger for meatpackers, or those working with tissues of an infected animal? I read of problems affecting meat packers, or any else exposed to—especially—the urine of an infected animal, but would cooking kill the bacteria and sufficiently denature toxins?
I know what The Asylum’s next movie will be.
Colombian Hippopotamus Problem is going to be the name of my new band*.
*I’m not actually starting a band.
Hippos kill about 3,000 people per year. (although so far at least none of them in Colombia)
On the other hand, Pablo Escobar was directly responsible for the murders of at least 4,000 people, probably many more, and if you count indirect responsibility from overdoses, gang violence, etc. the death toll probably numbers in the millions.
A huge number of Colombians think of him as some sort of folk hero so why would they worry about a few cute little hippos?
It would actually be possible to round them up and transport them to zoos or other suitable enclosures at no small expense. Estimates are about $500,000 - chump change to Escobar and presumably within the reach of a nation with a GDP of almost $600 billion.
Cooking might kill the bacteria, but I don’t think it renders toxins in meat safe. Once the bacteria has created toxins, they remain poisonous. But then, IANA scientist.
No zoo wants them. They can’t be sent to Africa. They’re in as good a place for a “suitable enclosure” as anywhere else, and they can’t be kept enclosed.
See, the thing is, Escobar has no money, he’s dead. So there’s a problem. Also, I don’t think the GDP of Colombia is as high as you think, or the economy so good.
From the article in the OP, there may be a solution!
*“It is not going to be accepted in general by environmentalists and biologists here, because Colombia doesn’t have a lot of money,” says Patricio von Hildebrand, a biologist working in the Amazon region. “They don’t think the money should be invested in maintaining a few hippos rather than conserving the original species in Colombia.”
Hildebrand has another, more radical solution: “I think they should barbecue them and eat them.”
He isn’t joking. During experiments with electric fences a while ago, he recalls, someone misjudged the voltage and electrocuted one of the Hacienda Napoles hippos. “What did the local people do? They took him, they chopped him up, they barbecued him and they ate him!” The animal is said to have tasted similar to pork.*