Community bands together to help zoo
BY FRANKLIN HAYES Gulf Breeze News franklin@gulfbreezenews.com

Franklin Hayes/Gulf Breeze News Riley Nicholson, 5, places flyers about a recycling drive in mailboxes around her Santa Rosa Shores East neighborhood.

Riley Nicholson, 5, giggled with enthusiasm as she dispersed half-page flyers throughout her neighborhood.

The flyer is the brainchild of her mother, Becky Nicholson, and advertises a grassroots recycling campaign in their community to save The Zoo of Northwest Florida.

"My idea is that this will be a steam roll effect," said Nicholson, a mother of two who lives in Santa Rosa Shores East. "Hopefully, people will go to their offices and churches and set up receptacles."

Nicholson plans to collect recyclable aluminum cans and turn them into cash for the Zoo at Wise Recycling in Pensacola. Harold Stone, local plant manager for Wise, said his company is willing to pay a nickel more per pound (for 100 lbs. or more) than usual for fundraising campaigns like Nicholson's.

"Prices vary for what you've got," said Stone. "If someone wants to sell us their scrap [metal] we'd be more than happy to make the check out to The Zoo."

Natalie Akin with the zoo said residents could also bring some recyclables to park directly.

"The beverages we sell at the zoo are canned so we can recycle them," Akin said, adding residents could also bring inkjet cartridges and cell phones to be recycled there. Akin said the waste reduction effort nets the zoo approximately $2,000 per year. When hurricanes struck the Gulf Breeze peninsula in 2004 and 2005, zoo staffers recycled all of the park's organic debris with woodchippers and reused the resulting material throughout the 50-acre facility.

The Zoo also received shark meat courtesy of the Outcast Mega Shark Tournament in Pensacola on July 29.

In addition to the recycling programs and fundraisers mentioned in previous articles, the zoo is putting together a couple of other fundraisers. Akin said due to the number of requests to organize a number of lemonade stand fundraisers, park officials are planning a county wide lemonade stand zoo charity day. Although no date has been set, Akin said the effort showed great local support for the park.

"It shows that this community wants to support their zoo," Akin said. "It shows that there is true ownership for the zoo in this community."

Zoo officials announced last month that the facility needs to raise $1 million by the end of 2007 and $3 million within a year to keep its doors open.

Zoo management is collecting many pledges but did not have an exact number of dollars donated as of press time.

However, Kenneth and Elizabeth Woolf, the Vigodsky Family Charitable Foundation, C. C. and Shirley Mertins have all made donations of $1,000 or more. Mary L. Anderson, David A. Bush, James and Margaret Espy, Terry and Sandra Adair, John G. Haass, Donna J. Rigby, Unity of Gulf Breeze, Stephen and Erin Sutton, George and Fredrica Prettyman, Roberta G. Sprague, Warren and Elizabeth Shepherd, Mary L. Anderson and Marilyn K. Milmore have all made donations of $100 or more. William and Cheryl Jones, James and Giulina Wiesner, Cheryl D. Neumann, Thomas and Carolyn Cruise, Sydney Beck, Mark and Melissa Pavich, William and Cheryl Jones , Jeffrey and Angelique Waldorff, Nathan Waldorff, Joe and Rita Harris, Joanne P. Wardlaw, Thomas and Edith Maltese, Phyllis Kulig, Alan A. Finkelstein, John and Helen Ward, Joseph and Sheila Hilwig, June M. Coles and Charles and Mary Jo Stout have made donations of up to $100.

Akin said many more have donated anonymously, or are yet to be added to the preceding list. For a more updated list of private donors and business partners, visit www.thezoonorthwestflorida. org.