How your Christmas tree could end up as an elephant's lunch

With memories of Yuletide fading rapidly, one early New Year task consists of getting rid of your old Christmas tree. For those who live near Noah's Ark Zoo Farm in south west England there's an easy, and very large, solution.

African elephants there make short work of a Christmas tree. Consuming more than 100 kilograms of food every day, an average-sized household tree can disappear in a few minutes. The zoo uses trees left by local residents to feed its larger inhabitants and give its smaller ones something to play with. 

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"A big part of our energy goes into animal welfare," says Larry Bush, managing director of the zoo. "Part of that is not just thinking about the great diet and the health for the animals - but also how do we create a really interesting environment, how do we change that environment up every few weeks and keep the animals stimulated? The Christmas trees are a great seasonal way of doing that."

The zoo also houses spectacled bears, the same species as beloved fictional character Paddington Bear. The bears keep a close eye on the Christmas trees, with vegetables hung like decorations offering a healthy alternative to Paddington's favorite marmalade sandwiches.

But Noah's Ark Zoo Farm's annual New Year mission all started as a mistake. A zoo with a similar name in America put a post on Facebook in 2020, asking for Christmas trees to be dropped off.

Some people on the other side of the Atlantic assumed it was their local zoo just outside Bristol, and hundreds of trees quickly appeared in its car park. Four years later, the UK Noah's Ark has embraced the mistake and now thousands of trees are dropped off there every January.

Those leaving trees can make a donation to the zoo, which is run as a charity. But, as Bush points out, the motivation is also to offer a greener way for locals to dispose of their trees.

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"It's quite a sad sight when you see your Christmas tree out on the pavement after Christmas, it looks a bit desolate," he says. "We're providing an opportunity that is exciting and interesting. But also it's very green - we're using the trees here on site. 

"Thousands of the trees will (also) be turned into wood-chip which we use for enrichment and also for mulch across the grounds. It means we can keep the tree miles down to as low as possible and create that sustainable next life for the Christmas trees."

From a quick trip round the zoo, you can see that animals of every size are fascinated in the tree-cycling.

But not all were that impressed. The meerkats seem to have lost their festive cheer, and were far more interested in just huddling under a heat lamp.

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