The Franklin Zoo & Wildlife Sanctuary is very grateful to the local community and it’s many dedicated volunteers and supporters, even with the zoo closed to the public, who provide browse for the elephant, provide their services and bring many useful items for the care and wellbeing of the animals. While the sanctuary is now closed, we continue to care for all the animals while their new homes are being prepared. This will take many months. The elephant still needs browse daily (see suitable browse list below) and the animals still need care daily.
We need donations to the Franklin Zoo Charitable Trust to maintain care for the animals and veterinary care and to fund Mila, African elephant, with her move to the US mid to late 2013. If you or your company would like to sponsor an animal or contribute to the Trust’s care for them, you can donate to the Trust through this web site, by mail or by direct credit - see Donations section of this web site for details.
If you look around at home or at work, you might find lots of things you don’t want or need anymore that we could make good use of at the zoo. We would very much appreciate items to be donated to the zoo such as:
- buckets
- wire cutters
- tools
- wire and netting
- wheel barrows, heavy duty tradesman’s type (for elephant waste)
- clean mulch (no mould) from safe trees (poplar, willow, gum)
- clean meadow hay
- clearlight plastic roofing
- perspex, decking timber
- certified organic fruit & vegetables
- heavy duty chain (for making elephant toys).
- tradesman’s type rakes, shovels, pitch forks
- plumbing work and materials
- electrical work and materials
- welding work and materials
- carpentry and fencing work and materials
- towels for the vet room
- hoses
- ground maintenance
There may even be some things you have that we haven’t even thought of.
We can also use unsprayed trees to feed the elephant such as:
- Bamboo
- Box Elder
- Coprosma
- Empress Tree (Phoenix palm)
- Feijoa
- Golden Wych Elm
- Honey Locust
- Lemonwood / Tarata
- Pohutakawa / NZ Christmas Tree
- Photinia species
- Tree Lucerne
- White Mulberry
- Willow species
Any queries, call 09 236 8686 or email us at
Thank you to all those kind and generous people who donate useful items to help the sanctuary animals and work done here by many volunteers.