The young male hippo that made headlines last year after escaping from a nature reserve in Cape Town will soon start his own herd, City Parks and Nature Conservation said on Saturday.
It said the hippo, which escaped from the Rondevlei Nature Reserve and took up residence in Zeekoevlei for several months until he was recaptured in December, will be joined by two females from Phalaborwa in the Limpopo province.
His new home is in Pumba Private Nature Reserve in the Eastern Cape, where he has settled in well.
”The capture and translocation of this animal has thus been instrumental in the formation of a new herd and an opportunity to increase the range of the species,” Dalton Gibbs, manager of the City of Cape Town’s Rondevlei Nature Reserve, said in a statement.
So far, six hippos have been translocated from Rondevlei since the reintroduction of these animals in 1981. Hippos were originally found in Cape Town but were exterminated by the 1700s.
The hippo escaped when a section of the reserve’s fence was destroyed during the night-time theft of an excavator from a waste-water treatment works, and made Zeekoevlei, edged by suburban homes, its new home in September.
Conservation officials tried repeatedly to lure the hippo back into the reserve, or to dart it, staking out the vlei by night and enlisting the aid of a helicopter by day.
It finally took six darts and a three-and-a-half hour chase in the dark through reed beds and deep water to recapture the 800kg animal. — Sapa