A zoo in England is asking residents to donate their used Christmas trees to help enrich the lives of their residents, be they bear, elephant, or meerkat.
Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm in Bristol is now in its 5th year of asking for Christmas trees, which are often tossed in landfills following the conclusion of the holidays. They’ve diverted 15,000 Christmas trees from contributing to landfill waste, but the real joy is the Christmas spirit it lends to their resident animals.
The zoo’s curator Chris Wilkinson, said the trees make a real difference in the animals’ lives. Some, like their elephants, like to eat them, while others like the spectacled bears and rhinos, like to forage in between them.
Still others like to rub up against the trees and enjoy the pine scent, while for smaller animals, they provide a paradise of play and exploration.
“These meerkats live as a mob, and they have a group structure,” explains Larry Bush, one of the farm’s wildlife biologists. “So when we create a new stimulation inside their space like these Christmas trees, they’re really curious, they’re foraging in the trees, they’re using all of their senses to explore this new enrichment.”
“For the elephants—their habitat is full of sand, which means we can bury the trees and stand them up to make a whole forest for them to come and explore,” Wilkinson told the BBC. “They’ll eat them a bit, they’ll throw them around, they’ll explore for the food we put in.”
This year they did the same for their spectacled bears, a small member of the species from the Andes Mountains. Planting a forest in their enclosure was an alternative to piling all the trees up in an enormous mass which they say the bears treat like a dog treats a pile of leaves in autumn.
This isn’t the only way local Brits can recycle their Christmas trees. One Christmas tree rental business in Yorkshire rents potted trees for the holiday season, replanting them in January so they can continue to grow.
MORE STORIES LIKE THIS: FedEx Delivers 300,000 Free Christmas Trees to Military Families With Annual Trees for Troops Program
Trees that are dying or too tall are then used as natural flood protection along the slopes of the Calder Valley, where small villages have been ravaged by floods for the last few years.
SHARE These Great Ways To Get More Out Of Your Christmas Tree…