The Minnesota Zoo is doing its part to help the environment — and vary the diets of its animals.
The park has formed a partnership with the Nine Mile Creek Watershed District and the City of Edina to explore a new use for the invasive goldfish clogging Lake Cornelia. The fish are the relatives of the pet goldfish abandoned in the lake. Over the years, the dumped goldfish have bred, crowding the lake, damaging the natural ecosystem, and putting native species at risk, according to The Minnesota Star Tribune.
For years, Edina and the Nine Mile Creek Watershed District had been removing thousands of fish from Lake Cornelia — 50,000 goldfish in 2023 — and hauling them away to farm fields, where they were dumped and buried, The new partnership allows the watershed district to send goldfish pulled from Lake Cornelia to the Minnesota Zoo to be fed to animals like bears, sea lions and otters.
