Why are Colombia’s cocaine hippos gonna get killed?

单集文稿 ...

• 00:02

  Hey, it's Hannah Gelbart here.

• 00:04

  I'm back on What in the World?

• 00:06

  I 've just woken up, it 's about 7am here in London and I'm perched on my bedroom window

• 00:11

  and what you can hear are the sounds of the birds.

• 00:14

  And that screech that you just heard is from a green parakeet.

• 00:21

  Every morning at around this time there's a huge flock of these bright green birds that flies past my bedroom window.

• 00:28

  They're not exactly a native species here, so it is a pretty amazing sight to see.

• 00:33

  And there are some really interesting theories as to how they came to be here.

• 00:37

  Some people say that they come from birds that were released by the singer Jimi Hendrix back in the 60s,

• 00:41

  or that they might have escaped when they were brought over to be filmed on a Hollywood film set.

• 00:46

  And this kind of thing happens around the world.

• 00:48

  In the Caribbean, there are African green monkeys that were brought over centuries ago.

• 00:53

  And in Colombia, there are the so-called cocaine hippos,

• 00:56

  which come from animals that were smuggled in by the late drug lord Pablo Escobar.

• 01:01

  And some of these animals, which are from outside their natural habitat,

• 01:04

  like the green parakeets that you heard, they can actually cause harm to ecosystems, to economies, even to people.

• 01:11

  So what do you do when they start to take over?

• 01:13

  And when, if ever, is it justified to kill them?

• 01:16

  That's what we're getting into today on What in the World from the BBC World Service.

• 01:23

  So I'm back in the studio now and we have got Esme Salad, our climate and science reporter here with me.

• 全部文稿