Will Zoo Get New Rhino Facility?

Milwaukee County Zoo. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

A committee of the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors provided an important approval for a new Rhino facility project at the zoo, but the actual funding still has to survive the budget process. And that may not be easy.

The board’s Committee on Finance unanimously recommended the full board authorize the zoo to enter into a development agreement with the Zoological Society of Milwaukee for the next phase in the Zoo’s new Adventure Africa exhibits. This phase calls for the development of a $22.2 million Rhinoceras exhibit.

The Zoological Society is a nonprofit that fundraises to support the zoo and its operations. Historically, it has split project costs like this 50/50 with the county. This time, however, the county would be providing nearly 70% of the funding for construction, about $16.2 million. A handful of supervisors have taken umbrage with this detail, noting that that county has a long list of financial needs and limited funding to address them. Funding for the project will likely be in County Executive David Crowley‘s recommended budget, but that still has to make it through the board.

The rhino facility was identified during a master planning process looking at infrastructure that needed improvements, said Vera Westphal, deputy zoo director. Other Adventure Africa facilities like the Elephant and Hippo exhibits have already been constructed and were opened in 2019 and 2020 respectively.

Originally, the project was estimated to cost $10 million. And the Zoological Society fundraised more than enough to provide the 50% match. But inflation drove construction costs through the roof, to a project cost of $22.2 million, and the society is left well short of a 50% match.

“There was no way to anticipate the escalation of prices from the impact of the pandemic and inflation,” a report from the zoo stated.

Officials from both the zoo and the society are trying to keep the project moving along on schedule to keep inflationary pressures from driving costs higher. The plan is to have the project ready for bid by construction firms in January 2024 and for construction to begin in March. The plan is to budget $12.4 million in 2024 and $9.2 million in 2025 for the project, Westphal said.

The current Rhino facility was built in 1950, Zoo Director Amos Morris told members of the Finance Committee. It no longer meets modern zoological standards and much of the facility is greatly degraded.

“We had send the Black Rhino out due to the conditions of the facility,” Morris said.

The Black Rhino is a critically endangered species, Morris said. It is likely there are only about 1,000 or fewer left in the entire world. In 2017, 919 were recorded in the wild, and 55 were in human care across 27 zoos, Morris said.

Morris has said at previous meetings of county committees that if the Rhinoceros project does not move forward, he will have to close off this section of the zoo to the public, due to the level of deterioration.

A handful of supervisors didn’t like hearing that the county would need to pony up more than a 50% match for the rhino project. At the Finance Committee, Supervisors Peter Burgelis and Juan Miguel Martinez both noted that there are a raft of projects and expenses the board will be considering, like pay raises to attract staff at the jail and a new transit security force.

“At minimum,” Burgelis declared, “I need to see the rest of the county executive’s budget before I can prioritize this investment ahead of transit safety, ahead of security, or ahead of correctional officer salaries that would avert a human crisis in our mandated responsibility for protecting human life; among all the other county departmental, mental health, homeless, transit, parks and other cultural investments.”

These comments were echoed by Martinez. Similarly, members of the board’s Parks and Culture Committee showed little enthusiasm for the project after hearing the county would be expected to contribute more than 50% to the project.

The project was recommended by the county’s ad-hoc Capital Improvements Committee (CIC), and Westphal said it will be in Crowley’s budget. But supervisors have shown little regard for the work of the CIC in recent budget cycles and whether a funding allocation for the rhino facility survives this year’s budget process remains uncertain.