Animals Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo help eat away invasive plants

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - Animals at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo will help “eat away” invasive plants at a nature preserve in Council Bluffs.

Under this new partnership, zoo staff will help cut out invasive trees and shrubs, called “browse,” at the Nature Conservancy’s nearly 300-acre prairie preserve.

Staff will then take those branches back to the zoo for the animals to eat.

It’s a win-win for the zoo and the preserve.

The animals get a nutritious snack and the preserve gets to help maintain one of the rarest ecosystems in the world.

“It provides a very naturalistic food item for many of our animals here at the zoo. Our elephants, giraffes, great apes, gorillas, and orangutans are huge browse consumers, so it’s perhaps the most natural diet item we can provide to them, a lot of what they’d