LUMEN Summer 2020 - Flipbook - Page 38
The Wild Africa precinct is already underway,
with the project expected to be completed
sometime in 2022. The development will
allow Monarto to continue its work with the
Australian Rhino Project, whose mission is to
bring African rhinos to Australia to establish an
“insurance population” to ensure their survival.
The rhino population is under threat because of
the black market value of their horns.
“Their horns are worth a lot of money even
though they're just keratin, they don't offer
any therapeutical or other benefits, they're
just fingernails. But they're worth up to about
70,000 US dollars a kilogram on the black
market, which is more than cocaine,” said Peter.
“We want to not only support counter-poaching
activities in Africa, but we also want to build
up a reasonable-sized insurance population of
rhinos in Australia and New Zealand. That's
why we started working with the Australian
Rhino Project, a group of individuals who are
very interested in the same thing.”
The target is to build Monarto’s rhino
population to 30-40 white rhinos and ten
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THE UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE
black rhinos, and Wild Africa is being built to
accommodate this. Getting them here is an
expensive exercise. Australia’s strict biosecurity
laws require quarantining the animals in New
Zealand before moving them to a quarantine
facility at Monarto.
As one of his favourite animals at the zoo, Peter is
passionate about rhino's survival..
“They’re big, and I guess dinosaur-like and
helpless. They are a reminder of the megafauna
of the past and I think losing them would be very,
very sad. It'd be like losing elephants to me, I can't
imagine our children not being able to see them,”
he said.
Peter grew up in Adelaide, attending St
Peter’s College before studying Agriculture at
Roseworthy college in 1970, sparking a keen
interest in entomology. Roseworthy was an allboys college at the time, and he describes himself
as a young and naïve boy from Adelaide who
quickly adjusted to the college lifestyle.
“There was a lot of college spirit there because
everybody followed sports and lived together.
There were 11 pubs around Roseworthy between
