We all know the story of Pablo Escobar's hippos - the drug lord brought them to Colombia as part of a private zoo, they bred, and today there are hundreds of them in Colombia's forests. Colombia's wildlife agency already castrated several, then announced a plan to euthanise 80. Now an unexpected saviour shows up - the son of the richest man in Asia.

Anant Ambani, the son of the Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, has offered to take in all the hippos at his private zoo centre "Vantara" in Gujarat. "We are ready to take them in and to care for them," the director of "Vantara" said. And added - "lifelong care". On Indian territory, not far from the world's largest oil refinery, owned by the same family.

Colombia is still silent. The story has whole layers of irony. Hacienda Napoles, Escobar's estate, is 250 kilometres northwest of Bogota. After his death in 1993, the hippos broke out and started breeding in the Magdalena river. No natural predators, ideal tropical conditions. Today this is "the largest population of hippos outside Africa," according to ecologists.

The danger to fishing communities is real - adult males weigh up to three tonnes and attack anything in their way. The question Colombian authorities have on the table is not sentimental - it is concrete. Do they accept an offer that solves the consequences for them, or do they euthanise and take in another round of condemnation from animal activists?

For the Balkans this is one of those exotic news fragments that we read with pleasure - something on the "Africa-Colombia-India" triangle, where we are not the protagonists. But we already know the punchline. When a billionaire can solve a problem the government cannot - it means two things. First, the problem is not impossible. Second, the government has a different priority.