All the news, good & bad, about vaquitas, jaguars, & hippos, oh my!

Vaquita porpoises & a clouded jaguar seen alive,  but Colombian environment minister wants to see feral hippos dead

SAN FELIPE,  Mexico;  TEGUCIGALPA,  Honduras;  BOGOTA,  Colombia––Recently reported good news about vaquita porpoises and jaguars,  among the most endangered species in Latin America,  was offset by the April 1,  2026 announcement by Colombian environment minister Irene Vélez Torres that she intends to have about half of the nation’s hippopotamus population shot.

Which will not be easy.  On the one hand,  shooting a hippo when clearly visible is about as hard as hitting the broad side of a barn.  On the other,  hippos are largely nocturnal,  mostly live in remote riverine swamps,  spend much of their time underwater,  have notoriously thick hide,  and tend not to tolerate humans in close proximity.

Though not native to Colombia,  the Colombian feral hippopotamuses are an ecologically valuable backup population to the fragmented native hippo population in Africa,  where hippos are counted as a vulnerable species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Vaquitas are not out of trouble

But some of the reported good news may not be what it seems,  either.

According to a widely amplified report by Jessica Tucker of A-Z Animals,  a project of the online “content production” company Flywheel Publishing in Lakewood,  Colorado,  a drone flown over the Sea of Cortez,  at the northern end of the Gulf of California,  on April 8, 2026 videotaped four adult vaquitas and three healthy calves.

This was touted by Tucker as confirmation of the success of a “Zero Tolerance Area” for use of gill nets.

Gill nets illegally set by poachers hunting the also endangered totoaba fish,  the maws of which command high prices in China,  entangle and drown vaquitas as well,  and are considered the major factor in driving vaquitas to the brink of extinction.

(See Vaquita, totoaba:  Gunfire on the Sea of Cortez.)

Sea Shepherd source?

So far,  so good,  but the report appears to be unconfirmed by reputable news media,  either in Mexico,  the U.S.,  or elsewhere.

The Tucker claims may trace back to an October 2025 report by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society,  which,  since ousting founder Paul Watson in 2022,  has continued vaquita population surveys begun in 2016.

“7-10 vaquitas!  New calves spotted as well,”  Sea Shepherd explained then in an Instagram video caption.  “The best news was that there were no gill nets seen or found during the survey.”

But the most recent vaquita news,  posted on February 10,  2026 by Maxwell Radwin of the internationally produced and published nonprofit conservation news website Mongabay,  was that “Officials in Mexico are considering shrinking a protected area in the Gulf of California,  the stretch of water between Baja California and mainland Mexico where the vaquita (Phocoena sinus) is endemic.

“The vaquita is the world’s smallest porpoise and the most endangered marine mammal,”  Radwin explained,  “with only an estimated 10 individuals remaining.

New regulations pending

“The proposal,”  Radwin wrote,  “not yet public but reviewed by Mongabay,  would reduce a gill net prohibition zone and allow traffic through a zero-tolerance area where all vessel activity is currently banned.

“The Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources and other agencies are developing the new regulations,  but it’s unclear when they will be implemented.”

Detailed Radwin,  “Protections in the northern Gulf of California were first established in 2005 and most recently revised in 2020.  They include a ‘zero-tolerance area’ spanning about 111 square miles where all navigation and fishing activity is prohibited,  as well as a surrounding ‘refuge area’ of 488 square miles with strict fishing regulations.

“Surrounding the refuge,”  Radwin continued,  is a ‘gillnet prohibition zone’ of approximately 4,247 square miles.

“The agreement establishing these protections also requires vessels to use authorized monitoring systems and departure sites and prohibits fishing at night,”  when both totoabas and vaquitas are most likely to be caught.

The Radwin report for Mongabay report was confirmed on April 14,  2026 by Chris Sands for Mexico News Daily.

Trail camera documents jaguar

Jackie Flynn Mogensen of Scientific American meanwhile disclosed that “newly released images,  taken in February 2026,  show a rare young male ‘cloud jaguar’—a jaguar living at high elevations—in the Sierra del Merendón,  a key connectivity corridor between jaguar populations in Honduras and Guatemala.  It’s the first time scientists say they have documented a jaguar on camera in these mountains in about 10 years.

“The sighting,  Mogensen wrote,  “offers a sliver of hope for the imperiled big cat,  which is struggling to survive across its range in North and South America,  largely because of a combination of habitat loss and poaching.

“As farmland, deforestation and human development have fractured its habitat,  the jaguar,”  never numerous in post-European settlement times,  “lost as much as an estimated 25% of its adult population between 1995 and 2016,  according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, which lists the species as ‘near threatened.'”

Jaguars,  Mogensen added,  “are the only living members of the genus Panthera native to the Americas. The other (living) members are lions,   tigers,  leopards,  and snow leopards.”

The puma,  or mountain lion,  relatively common in both North and South America,  is of the genus Felidae,  and is the only living member of Felidae.

Hippos not “endangered,”  but “vulnerable”

With a widely distributed current African population estimated at between 115,000 and 130,000,  hippopotamuses are far from the same risk of extinction as vaquitas,  totoabas,  and jaguars.

Hippos are,  however,  jeopardized in much of their much fragmented range by habitat loss from human encroachment,  pollution of some of the waterways they continue to inhabit,  poaching for meat and ivory,  and disease,  especially anthrax,  often transported into their habitat by sick and dying domestic livestock,  especially cattle.

The feral hippopotamuses in Colombia are of the most common species,  Hippopotamus amphibius,  found in the southern half of the African continent,  distinct from Nile hippos and pygmy hippos,  whose much smaller populations survive farther north.

The Colombian hippos are not themselves entirely isolated from the same threats afflicting their African kin,  but are not at risk from disease transmitted by other hippos.

$2 million hit contract

Apparently oblivious to African conservation concerns,  Colombian environment minister Irene Vélez Torres on April 13,  2026 told media that previous attempts to control the feral population by nonlethal means,  including sterilization,  attempted in 2022,  have been expensive and unsuccessful.

Vélez Torres allocated $2 million to kill a quota of 80 hippos,  believed to be nearly half of the present Colombian population.

“If we don’t do this we will not be able to control the population,” Vélez Torres said,  projecting that the current 170 to 200 hippos could soon multiply up to 500.

“We have to take this action to preserve our ecosystems.”

Antillean manatees

Vélez Torres suggested that the hippos,  now ranging over about 60 miles of the Magdalena River valley,  might harm the Colombian population of about 500 Antillean manatees,  classified as critically endangered.

Though both are large herbivorous animals with huge appetites and habitat needs,  African hippos and dugongs,  closely related to manatees,  do not compete,  since hippos live upstream in freshwater rivers and lakes,  while dugongs remain in downstream saltwater estuaries.

Whether hippos and dugongs might compete in the Magdalena River is unknown.  Hippos,  however,  being larger and much more aggressive,  would easily win in any direct conflict.

Pablo Escobar

Hippos arrived in Colombia in 1981,  when cocaine baron Pablo Escobar (1949-1983) added one male and three females to his private zoo at Hacienda Nápoles.

Those four hippos broke loose after Escobar was fatally shot in 1993 by Colombian authorities who were trying to recapture him and return him to prison,  after he had escaped.

Remaining on the run for 33 years now,  despite repeated attempts to hunt them and/or capture them,  the descendants of Escobar’s hippos are now the biggest hippo herd outside of Africa,  and have filled an ecological niche for large inland herbivores left vacant since the human invasion of South America less than 15,000 years ago resulted in the extinction of at least 35 very large megafauna.

Vélez Torres and an academic supporting cast argued that the feral hippos menace villagers who encounter then while farming and fishing.

Hippos are dangerous,  but not that dangerous

Indeed,  hippos are commonly said to kill as many as 500 African villagers per year in accidental meetings,  but Katt Hendershot, operations specialist for The Wild Source ecotourism agency,  points out that,  “A 2012 paper published in the Journal of Ecology,”  titled the ‘Natural Environment, Patterns of human–wildlife conflicts in Zambia:  Causes, consequences, and management responses,  “looked at human-wildlife conflicts in Zambia from 2002 to 2010.

“They reported 65 people killed by hippos during this period,  or about 10.8 people per year,”  in the nation which has about a third of the total African hippo population.

This,  Hendershot wrote,  projects to a continent-wide human death toll from hippos of about 38 per year.

A Frontiers in Conservation Science paper published in 2022 found that about 87% of documented hippo conflicts with humans were fatal to the humans,  but about a third of the death toll appears to be from drownings after hippos rising to the surface accidentally upset heavily loaded watercraft.

Tourist attraction

Wrote Manuel Rueda for Associated Press,  “Despite the challenges,  the [Colombian] hippos have become a tourist attraction,  with residents of villages surrounding Hacienda Nápoles offering hippo spotting tours and selling hippo-themed souvenirs.

“The hippos are also one of the main attractions at the Nápoles ranch,  which was confiscated by Colombia’s government as it seized Escobar’s properties.  It now functions as a theme park,  featuring swimming pools,  water slides,  and a zoo that includes several other African species.”

Leading efforts to stop the hippo culling scheme is Andrea Padilla,  introduced by Rueda as “a senator and animal rights activist who helped draft a law against bullfights in Colombia.”

Said Padilla,  “Killings and massacres will never be acceptable.”

Recalled Al Jazeera,  “When an aggressive male hippo was killed in 2009, a photo of soldiers posing with the animal’s body sparked outrage and halted efforts to rein in the hippos.”

But,  wrote Humberto Basilio for Scientific American,  “Over the past decade,  there has been a major scientific awareness campaign about the risks and effects of hippos in the country,  and it has led to broader public acceptance of the new measure.”

Which remains to be seen,  especially since the hippo tourism industry has emerged mostly within the same time frame.

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