ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) -The Alaska Zoo is looking for Alaskans willing to share leftover fish and meat with their zoo residents. Leftover fish and meat that meet the zoo’s donation criteria can be donated to the zoo to help feed nearly every resident on site.
“We rely on them, heavily,” Sam Lavin, a curator at the Alaska Zoo, said. “It’s fantastic for us to be able to take it. This is a part of the Alaska community and the Alaska Zoo’s been here a long time and people appreciate the work we do here and want to see us do well.”
Lavin said one of their brown bears alone on site eats around 5,000 pounds of donated food yearly. The donated food, she said, not only provides the zoo with an opportunity to feed animals their natural food but also helps the zoo save tens of thousands of dollars each year.
“The amount of just salmon we get donated is probably $100,000 a year if you had to buy it,” Lavin said. “We would have to cut back on other things that we couldn’t afford, like some of the enrichment items. Probably some of our payroll would have to get cut back because we wouldn’t be able to afford so much.”
The donation process is simple. People can drop off fish and meat at the freezers near the Alaska Zoo’s greenhouse. Donated items, Lavin said, need to be no more than two years old, unseasoned and must not be overly freezer-burned. Items that are donated that do not meet those criteria, she said, are then donated to dog mushers.
Lavin told Alaska’s News Source their team checks their freezers around six-times a day. Often time, she said, their freezers are full. If freezers are full, she said, people can inform the admissions office.
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