Potter Park Zoo Plans $1.1 Million Expansion to Bring Black Rhino

Lansing’s Potter Park Zoo has plans to invest $1.1 million in a rhinoceros exhibit expansion.

The project would include a 500 to 600 square foot addition to the existing, 1,560 square foot rhino building. It would also double the size of the current outdoor rhino yard.

Zoo Director Gerry Brady hopes to add a black rhino to the exhibit. Only 520 black rhinos exist in the wild. More than 60,000 wild black rhinos existed in 1960, Brady says.

“Every single rhino in Kenya has a bodyguard,” Brady says.

Brady is working with the International Rhino Foundation to get a black rhino in the zoo. Brady says doing so will help with breeding and preservation of the rhinos.

“It’s very important for Potter Park Zoo to get this done,” he says. The zoo wants to make sure that it has proper space and accommodations for the black rhino before bringing it to the zoo. “If we’re going to have black rhinos, we’ve got to do it right.”

The Potter Park Zoo has had rhinos since 1990. Brady hopes to have the expansion complete by the fall of 2009.

Source: Gerry Brady, Potter Park Zoo

Ivy Hughes, development news editor, can be reached here. 

All Photographs © Dave Trumpie