Pablo Escobar's hippos are the first animals to be declared "legal persons" in the United States

Pablo Escobar's hippos are the first animals to be declared

This is the first time an animal has been recognized as "legal personnel" in a US court.

He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him

Pablo Escobar's hippos in Colombia have a lawyer. This is the first time an animal has been recognized as "legal personnel" in a US court.  





A court in the southern district of Ohio in the United States recognized the Colombian hippos brought in 1981 by Pablo Escobar as "legal persons". This means that since their rights are recognized by law, as a birth control measure, they cannot be sacrificed or sterilized by any method. 

With the Colombian hippo lawyer, what changes? 

Although the castration of hippos had already begun, with 24 mammals already spayed with GonaCon, a drug developed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and 11 more in the traditional way, the process stopped because their advocate, the lawyer Luis Domingo Gómez Maldonado, believing that the possibility of ending the lives of these animals still exists, has proposed another safer method of sterilization to the Colombian government. 

Colombian law allows non-human beings to bring lawsuits that protect their interests, but cannot force US citizens to produce documentation or testimony in support of their case. However, a US law allows Colombian citizens, or "legal persons", to go to a US federal court to seek documents and testimony.  

By granting the petition to the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the United States District Court recognized the plaintiffs - a community of hippos living in the Magdalena River - as legal entities. first. For this, two Ohio-based wildlife experts who study non-surgical neutering to testify on behalf of the animals were brought to court. 

The court order authorizing hippos to exercise their legal right to obtain information in the United States is a key milestone in the broader fight against animal status to recognize that animals have executive rights, ”said Stephen Wells, the executive director of the ALDF. 



GonaCon on PZP 

While the lawsuit is ongoing, there is still no reliable data on whether the Colombian government's use of the drug GonaCon is safe and effective, and it is not even known how many hippos the government intends to kill. The defense of hippos for its part calls for the use of a contraceptive called PZP (porcine zona pellucida), given its historical success in hippos held in zoos and given its recommendation by an international advisory committee assembled by Animal Balance, a ' international organization that focuses on the sterilization of animals. 

Testimony from Animal Balance wildlife experts Dr Elizabeth Berkeley and Dr Richard Berlinski will be used to bolster support for the PZP contraceptive, thereby preventing hippos living in the Magdalena River from continuing to grow populations without having to resort to their killing. 

For years Colombia has been looking for solutions to control the hippo population in the Magdalena Medio, an invasive species that damages the ecosystem and represents a danger for the inhabitants of the area. However, killing these animals is not the right way to remedy the situation. 

From an animal point of view, I think it's clear that they would rather be neutered than ejected, ”said Christopher Berry, the attorney overseeing the case from the United States. 

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Source: ALDF / Animal Balance

About hippos in Colombia, you can also read:

  • Pablo Escobar's hippos will not be sacrificed, Colombia starts the pilot project to sterilize them
  • Pablo Escobar's hippos have colonized the rivers of Colombia. And now they want to take them all down
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