County Funds New Rhino Facility for Zoo

Milwaukee County Zoo. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

The Milwaukee County Zoo will begin work on a new rhinoceros facility in 2024.

The 2024 budget includes approximately $6.9 million for design and construction of a rhinoceros habitat and exhibit area for the zoo. The rhino project is the third and final phase in the development of the zoo’s Adventure Africa exhibit. The first two phases saw new habitats built for elephants and hippopotamuses.

The current rhino habitat was built in 1950. It is deteriorated and does not meet modern zoological standards. Consequently, the zoo has not had a rhino for some years.

Zoo Director Amos Morris has said the zoo hopes to bring Eastern Black Rhinos to the facility once it is built. The species is critically endangered; in 2017 there were less than 1,000 living in the wild. There are approximately 55 of Eastern Black Rhinos in North America spread across 27 zoos, Morris said in October. The rinos are threatened in their natural habitat by poachers, who kill them for their horns, according to the zoo.

The new rhino facility is estimated to cost approximately $22 million and will take two years to finish. The county is splitting the 2024 cost evenly with the Zoological Society of Milwaukee. In 2025, though, the county will have to budget another $9.2 million to finish the job.

Usually, the county and the zoological society split funding for large infrastructure projects evently. But inflation in recent years more than doubled the cost of the project. Initially, the nonprofit society had raised more than 50% of the estimated project cost.

County Executive David Crowley included the project in his 2024 budget proposal. A handful of supervisors were unhappy, though, that the county was on the hook for more than 50% of the rhino project. Sup. Peter Burgelis drafted an amendment to the 2024 budget that directs the zoo to plan its annual infrastructure expenses with at least 50% of the funding coming from the zoological society or grants.

However, the inclusion of the project ultimately proved useful to the board for other reasons. Crowley’s budget planned to use cash from the 2024 budget surplus to pay for the rhino project. The board, through amendments, swapped approximately $5.9 million of the cash for debt and used the cash on a number of other projects.

The funding helped supervisors secure passage of the full budget with limited disagreement. The budget was passed with two super amendments that stitched together funding and policy priorities from enough supervisors to represent a majority of the board. Both were financed with cash from the rhino project.