Peter Clark works within Zoos South Australia as the director of Monarto Safari Park. He first joined Zoos SA in 2003 and now oversees the management of the organisation’s open-range zoo at Monarto, which is the largest zoo in Australasia, located around 70km east of Adelaide.
Clark brings more than 35 years of wildlife experience, with his previous roles including working with zoos, wildlife businesses, conservation and environmental education in Papua New Guinea. He also serves on the IUCN’s Conservation and Planning Group and is a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society of London.
In 2021, Clark was presented with a UNESCO achievement award for his conservation career spanning almost 50 years. During his career, he has advocated for and worked with some of the rarest animals in the world.
As director of Monarto, he has successfully overseen many projects and developed a number of engaging experiences, such as Lions 360, Land of the Lemurs and the Jane Goodall Chimpanzee Conservation Centre. He is now working on bringing the African Safari experience to South Australia in a A$50 million project called “Wild Africa”. This project will give the zoo an opportunity to house an insurance population of rhinos and to breed cheetahs in large open-range areas.
Speaking about his work at Zoos SA in an interview with blooloop in 2018, Clark said:
“We’ve got two aims in life,” says Clark. “One is to save animals from extinction, which we have been successful at doing with quite a few species.
“The second, which is almost more important, is connecting people with nature. We really believe that people, when they can see things up close, are going to get increasingly involved in conservation themselves. We take about 60,000 children a year through our two zoos. They are the ones that really take it all on board.”