Pachyderm House - Black Rhino Exhibit

@pachyderm pro

Should the Pachyderm House be renovated and revamped for black rhinos?

@Matthew Guimac To put it frankly, no. To quote @pachyderm pro,

"Discussion with a Pachyderm Keeper:
I was able to catch the tail end of a keeper chat with the zoos older male black rhino. At the end of the presentation, I asked a few questions in regards to what the zoos future holds when it comes to pachyderms. Here are a few key details

• Lets get the elephant in the room out of the way. Are elephants slated to make their return to Brookfield in the upcoming master plan? Yes. However, it is not the zoos priority at the moment. It will still be at least several more years until elephants will be returning, and it won't be in the pachyderm house. Speaking of which...
• Whats the future of the pachyderm house? The 9 decade old building is ancient and has become a maintenance nightmare. The building is sucking up a ton of the zoos up keep investments, and while I had suspected it would be kept around because of its history, it appears that won't be the case. Within the next decade, the pachyderm house will likely be demolished.
• I was given some insight on to what the original plan for elephants was going to be. Shortly after the zoo last elephant departed, the plan was going to be to covert the pachyderm building into a dedicated elephant complex. Yards would have taken up both sides of the building and rhinos, hippos and tapirs would have displaced. A massive indoor dayroom would have taken up about 3/4 of the pachyderm house and there is actually a rendering of this that can be found in the gallery. However, the numbers were crunched, the infrastructure was examined, and it was determined that the plan was far too impractical to go through. Mainly because there is a large basement under the pachyderm building, and having a ceiling that can support multiple elephants would be far too ambitious of a task.
• Lastly, whats the future of the zoos rhino breeding program? Unfortunately, it appears unlikely that Layla will ever be pregnant. This is because of her life threatening infection that requires constant surgeries for essential the rest of her life. She will soon be introduced to the younger male, King, but once again calves are likely not happening."

On a side note, it kind of already has been since Joyce, their last African elephant left the zoo. Her yard and the previous black rhino yards on the southern end of the Pachyderm House became a dedicated black rhino facility. To end on a cordial and inquisitive note, have you been to the Brookfield Zoo before?

@Wyman

No. I never visited the Brookfield Zoo ever in my life.

@Matthew Guimac I'm not able to make a visit myself because of La Corona/statewide restrictions on travel, but Google Streetview has a pretty good setup if you're interested. Plus there are tons of photos on ZooChat.