Bamboo takeaway goes down a treat
Rhinos and pandas at Edinburgh Zoo are feasting on bamboo from Dunollie Woods.
Zoo worker Neil Paterson joined Woodland Trust volunteers in the woods last week to cut canes and pack as many of the stems as possible into the back of a van ready for feeding time.
Sasa palmata bamboo, Japanese in origin, has been sprouting in Dunollie Woods for several decades and can grow by two-anda-half metres in height and four-and-a-half metres wide in ten years, taking up valuable space for native plants to grow.
The zoo already took a delivery from Dunollie back in January for Yang Guang and Tian Tian, the UK’s only pandas, but the rhinos have a taste for it too, said Neil.
Bamboo supplies usually come from a nursery in the Netherlands; the zoo even has a special fridge to keep the canes in.
‘We can go through four or five pallets of the stuff every week so Dunollie’s donation is very much appreciated,’ he added.
Ross Watson, the Woodland Trust’s site manager for the North of Scotland, gave volunteers a hand with cutting and packing.
‘The Woodland Trust has had Dunollie for three years now. In that time we have been learning and discovering more about the place. We have six invasive non-native plants invading the woods from different parts of the site and this bamboo is one of them.
‘It’s great that we are able to tackle it by not using chemicals and that we can put the by-product to good use by feeding it to the animals at Edinburgh Zoo. We’ve had ten volunteers helping us today and had about ten last time which is all part of the Trust’s mission to connect people to their local habitats.’
It currently costs £35,000 each month for food and healthcare for Tian Tian and Yang Guang so the delivery of their main food source will help cut their care bill.