BUSINESS REFLECTION: Loaded For Bear: are the feral hippos of a Colombian drug lord alien invaders or ecological trend-setters?

A population of feral hippos in Colombia is a bizarre legacy of the late drug lord Pablo Escobar. A court last week ordered that the animals be hunted and sterilised on the grounds that they are affecting the area’s “ecological balance”. But some conservationists have maintained that the critters are actually restoring the region’s ecological integrity.