Lions, tigers at Northland wildlife sanctuary want your Christmas trees

Saturday, 28 December 2019

A lion at Northland’s Kamo Wildlife Sanctuary plays with a donated Christmas tree.

A Northland wildlife sanctuary is on the hunt for used Christmas trees for its big cats to play with.

Kamo Wildlife Sanctuary owner Janette Allance said the trees would provide 'enrichment' in the form of toys for the 22 lions, tigers, leopards and cheetahs on site.

New management of Kamo Wildlife Sanctuary in Whangarei said the park’s controversial days were behind it. It reopened in December 2021 and went into liquidation in March 2023. (Video first published May 2018)

“Big cats just really like to destroy stuff. So they‘ll rub on the trees or chew and crush them up,” she said.

“It's interacting with the smells or just moving them around in their enclosure. It makes them stretch and move.”

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The zoo is based in Whangarei and has 16 lions, four tigers, a leopard and a cheetah.

Allance said the sanctuary had received six trees since it appealed for donations on its Facebook page on Boxing Day.

Each year, there are multiple instances of trees being dumped illegally. These trees were dumped on a pavement in Auckland's Ponsonby on December 27.

“We take what we can get. If the lions destroy a few and we got a few more coming in, we can swap them over,” she said.

“They're like small children in many ways, their attention spans are that short. So they'll get bored with the trees after a while and crush them.”

The sanctuary has been closed for five years and came under new ownership two years ago, with plans to reopen later this summer.

Formerly known as the Zion Wildlife Gardens, the exhibit rose to fame through the Lion Man television series featuring Craig 'Lion Man' Busch.

Christmas trees cannot be thrown out in kerbside rubbish or recycling wheelie bins and each year there are multiple instances of trees being dumped illegally.

Auckland Council recommends composting them, returning them to the tree supplier or simply keeping and enjoying the live plant if it's a tree in a pot.