Hippos in America
America faced a meat shortage in the early twentieth century. As the population burgeoned, the price of beef skyrocketed as industry struggled to meet increased demand. Between natural increase and waves of new immigrants, America had many more mouths to feed, and many of those mouths wanted meat. Unfortunately, while that was going on, cattle ranges had been ruined by decades of overgrazing, herds shrank, and the number of cows in the country dropped by millions every year. What came to be known as the “Meat Question” was a serious issue at the time, never far from the minds of consumers, pundits, and politicians. Things seemed so dire, that there was even serious talk of a potential famine unless a solution was found.
Against that backdrop, somebody had a bright idea: hippopotamuses. Why not import hippos from Africa, set them loose in the Gulf Coast’s deltas and swamplands, and eat them? Hippos were full of blubbery goodness, so why not turn America into a nation of hippo ranchers? To many, that seemed like a great answer to the Meat Question. A US Department of Agriculture researcher figured that the answer to the country’s meat shortage lay in the exploitation of unproductive lands to produce food. Gulf Coast swamps were highly unproductive, but that could change if hippos were introduced there. Free range hippopotamuses set loose in the bayous, especially those of Louisiana, could easily yield a million tons of meat per year.