In a move that bridges the surreal legacies of narcotrafficking and private megafauna conservation, the son of India’s richest man has formally offered to relocate eighty of Pablo Escobar’s feral hippopotamuses from Colombia to his private animal sanctuary in Gujarat. Anant Ambani, scion of the Reliance Industries empire, submitted a request to the Colombian government to stay a recently approved plan to euthanise the animals, whose population has spiralled from four imported by the drug lord in the 1980s to an estimated two hundred today. Without intervention, modelling suggests the herd could exceed five hundred by 2030, threatening native species and waterways across the Magdalena River basin.

The offer lands at a fraught moment in what zoologists call one of the strangest dilemmas in modern wildlife management. The hippos, an invasive species in Colombia, have no natural predators and their territorial behaviour has alarmed local communities. Bogotá’s decision to cull eighty of them followed years of failed sterilisation efforts and a growing environmental toll. Yet the proposal has stirred opposition from animal welfare activists and tourism operators who have turned Escobar’s former estate, Hacienda Nápoles, into a macabre attraction. Viewed from Bogotá, the culling plan is a pragmatic necessity; from New Delhi, it is an opportunity for philanthropic intervention on a grand scale.

Anant Ambani’s Vantara centre, a three-thousand-acre rescue facility in Gujarat, already houses thousands of animals and describes itself as one of the world’s largest wildlife sanctuaries. The timing of his offer is also notable for the wider Ambani family’s visibility: only weeks ago, pop superstar Rihanna visited the family compound in Mumbai to promote her Fenty Beauty brand, underscoring the clan’s blend of luxury, business and global celebrity. The juxtaposition of a cosmetics launch and the rescue of narcotics-linked hippos may appear incongruous, but analysts in London note that the Ambanis have long used high-profile projects to burnish their reputation as custodians of both wealth and the natural world.

The conservation narrative gains further texture from a separate, more conventional repatriation underway this week. Four mountain bongos, a critically endangered antelope native to Kenya’s highland forests, were flown from a Czech zoo to Nairobi in what the Kenya Wildlife Service called a “historic homecoming”. Less than a hundred bongos remain in the wild, and the transfer is intended to rebuild a population in a private reserve. That operation, modest in scale but ecologically precise, stands in contrast to the Ambani proposal, which involves moving an invasive species across continents rather than returning a native one to its original habitat.

From a forward-looking perspective, the success of the hippo translocation hinges on Colombia’s willingness to suspend its culling schedule and on the logistical feasibility of moving eighty adult hippopotamuses – each weighing up to two tons – without harm. Anant Ambani has stressed that the animals “did not choose where they were born”, appealing to a sense of animal justice that resonates with international welfare groups. Yet environmentalists in Colombia caution that relocation does not address the root cause of the invasion, and that without stricter controls, similar dilemmas will recur. For now, the offer represents a novel test of whether private wealth can resolve a public ecological crisis born of criminal excess – and whether the hippos of Hacienda Nápoles can trade a Colombian river for an Indian sanctuary.