Fort Worth Zoo working on plans for new Serengeti project

The need is critical.

Poaching continues to slaughter elephants, rhinos and giraffes in the wild.

Last weekend while in Kenya, President Barack Obama announced a ban on interstate ivory sales, but critics have said there are loopholes to those restrictions. On Thursday, the United Nations General Assembly urged its member nations to deal with the illegal wildlife trade “on both the supply and demand sides.”

All of those reasons are compelling enough to keep up the successful breeding programs at the Fort Worth Zoo.

“There may not be elephants in the wild in the next generation,” Mike Fouraker, the zoo’s executive director, told the Fort Worth City Council on July 21. “We intend to have them at the Fort Worth Zoo.”

To keep growing those programs, the zoo needs more space.

Fouraker laid out a preliminary plan to the City Council for a new Serengeti project for the zoo’s collection of rhinoceros, elephants and giraffes.

When exactly the new exhibit will open remains to be seen.

“We don’t have firm plans in place,” Fouraker told the City Council. “We are doing conceptuals.”

Excavation work will start in January or February on an undeveloped 10-acre site at the zoo, said zoo spokeswoman Alexis Wilson.

“There are unprecedented threats to many species in the wild that we’ve had great success breeding in our zoo,” Wilson said. “We’re keeping these animals genetically sound and diverse in the event we mitigate circumstances in the wild.”

The Fort Worth Zoo has nine giraffes, seven elephants and a pair of breeding rhinos.

The zoo also has a stake in 70 percent of the black rhino population in North America, with many of those animals loaned out to other zoos, Wilson said.

At the last census, there were 34 black rhinos in North America. The Fort Worth Zoological Association and board members involved in the program own 22 of those animals.

Fouraker is a board member of the International Rhino Foundation, which Fort Worth billionaire Lee Bass, along with the late conservatist Harry Tennison, helped found. Tennison helped bring rhinos to Texas in 1989, placing them at Lee and Ramona Bass’ ranch in South Texas as well as at the Fort Worth Zoo.

Fouraker also helped found the International Elephant Foundation, where he is a past president and remains on the foundation’s board.

While the zoo is on city property, the Fort Worth Zoological Association has managed the zoo under a contract with the city since 1991. All renovations and construction associated with the Serengeti project will be privately funded. The zoo has pledges of $20 million.

Zoo officials stress that the zoo’s footprint in Forest Park won’t grow.

“In case you all get asked by anybody that’s curious, we are not expanding beyond the zoo boundary,” Fouraker told the City Council.

Other activity underway in Forest Park is not part of the zoo project.

The city is repaving Colonial Parkway and parking lots in the park. The City Council approved the $1.1 million project at its June 16 meeting. The work is scheduled to be completed in October.

This story was originally published July 31, 2015 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Fort Worth Zoo working on plans for new Serengeti project."