There’s a cooler tucked behind the scenes at Denver Zoo Conservation Alliance that most guests will never see. Inside, bundles of tree branches stripped, weighed, and sorted are lined up and ready for delivery. By the end of the week, every pound of that material will have found its way to one of 86 animals across 26 species on campus.
This is where Quinn Voeglie works. As Browse Coordinator II in DZCA’s Animal Nutrition department, Quinn oversees a program that is equal parts animal care, conservation, and community collaboration, and it’s growing faster than almost anyone expected.
What Is Browse, Exactly?
If you’ve ever watched a giraffe strip leaves from a branch or seen an elephant methodically work through a pile of woody material, you’ve seen browse in action.
At DZCA, browse means providing roughly 1,300 pounds of tree material every single week to pachyderms, primates, hoofstock, and select species in Tropical Discovery and the Animal Ambassador program. That number holds year-round, regardless of season.
The reasons an animal might need browse fall into three broad categories: nutritional, medical, and behavioral. Gorillas, orangutans, okapis, and giraffes rely on browse for the high fiber content essential to their diets. Other animals receive it as part of managing specific medical conditions or encouraging food compliance. And for nearly every species, browse plays a vital role in mental stimulation and natural behavior, reducing negative habits and promoting the kind of slow, engaged feeding that mirrors what these animals would do in the wild.
There’s even a dental benefit. For elephants and wallabies, chewing bark acts as a kind of natural toothbrush, helping reduce plaque and tartar and lowering the risk of tooth impaction.
Building Something New
When Quinn joined DZCA in August 2024, the Browse program was undergoing a significant transformation. What had been a more conventional operation was pivoting toward sustainability, toward community, and toward a fundamentally different philosophy about where browse comes from.
The results have been striking. In the summer of 2025, the program brought in approximately 14,000 pounds of repurposed tree material. In 2026, that number climbed to nearly 20,000 pounds and not a single pound was cut specifically for the Zoo.
“These were all projects that were already going to be occurring,” Quinn emphasizes. “We were able to create a mutually beneficial partnership and feed some of our animals in the process.”
The Numbers Behind the Mission
The financial impact of this approach is hard to overstate. In winter months, when locally sourced browse isn’t available, DZCA works with vendors in Arizona and Florida to ship material in—a significant and expensive logistical undertaking.
“It’s a massive commodity,” Quinn says. “Last summer, 14,000 pounds of browse would have cost approximately $93,000 to ship in with freight and vendor pricing. This summer, that 20,000 pounds would have run about $123,000.”
By building local partnerships and diverting material that would otherwise end up in waste streams or at dump sites, the program offsets both that cost and the carbon emissions associated with long-distance freight, all while delivering a fresher, higher-quality product to the animals.
A Day at Fort Logan
Perhaps the most vivid example of what this program has become happened in September, when Quinn and the Browse team spent a day at Fort Logan National Cemetery as part of a partnership with Saluting Branches, a national nonprofit that organizes days of service at military cemeteries across the country.
Arbor companies, horticulturists, and volunteers gathered to do stump grinding, tree pruning, and cleanup across the cemetery grounds. The DZCA Browse team played ground crew, collecting and repurposing the removed material rather than sending it to a chip pile or a landfill.
It’s the kind of partnership that captures everything this program is trying to be: a community effort with benefits that ripple outward far beyond the Zoo’s campus.
The Collaboration Behind Every Bundle
Running a program of this scale requires coordination across almost every corner of the Zoo. Internally, the Browse team works closely with the Pachyderm, Hoofstock, Primate, and Ambassador teams, as well as Horticulture, Animal Nutrition, and the Veterinary staff who review every source of material for treatment history, pollution runoff, and any potential contaminants before it reaches an animal.
Beyond the campus, the community partnerships that fuel the program require their own kind of relationship-building. Because the material arrives as donations, each partnership is tailored to the needs of the organization providing it, whether that’s a wildfire mitigation crew, an invasive species removal team, or an arbor company that never wanted to see a tree come down in the first place.
More Than Feed
Walk past the giraffe yard on a busy afternoon and you might catch a glimpse of what Quinn means when he talks about browse as enrichment. A large limb hung at height, positioned to mimic a tree. A giraffe slowly working its way through the leaves, one by one.
For DZCA, browse has always been part of caring for the whole animal. Under Quinn’s coordination, it’s becoming something more: a reflection of what it means to be a conservation organization that is deeply embedded in its community, committed to its environment, and endlessly creative about finding ways to make both better.
One bundle at a time.
