Certainly the evergreen tree which has been the focal point of your festive Christmas season has been a joyful addition to your home for the past month. However, soon after Christmas–and certainly after New Year’s Day–it will become an eyesore.
Generally the once lauded spruce or pine is dragged to the curb for garbage day or tossed over the back fence in the woods. However, there is still plenty of use left in that tree well after its adornments of colored lights and star topping are mothballed away. Around the state recycled Christmas trees are commonly used to create fish habitat.
“We tie them together with cinder blocks every five or six trees and drop them in the water,” said Karl Hakala, operations manager for the US Army Corps of Engineers at Jennings Randolph Lake. “They will be used to provide cover for fish and enhance habitat for juvenile fish.”
Corps officials at Jennings Randolph Lake on the West Virginia/Maryland border will be collecting the used trees to sink in the water to create more fish habitat. Like so many of the Corps projects in West Virginia, Jennings Randolph is bereft of any great volume of fish cover.
“The area where the lake now sits was pretty much clear cut,” said Hakala. “We have to add man made (habitat) as a substitute for that environment.”
Such fish attractors are placed in many lakes in West Virginia.
“We put them in several of our bigger lakes every year,” said DNR Assistant Chief for Warmwater Fisheries Brett Preston. “This year I think we’re looking at East Lynn, Beech Fork, Stonecoal, Mount Storm, Sutton, and Summersville.”
The DNR relies heavily on the Department of Environmental Protection’s REAP program which gathers Christmas trees for recycling at the Capital Market in Charleston in early January.
“It’s been a really good partnership with DEP,” said Preston. “We’ve done this for a long time, but since DEP got involved it’s really increased our ability to get extra trees and get them transported to different locations.”
For more on the Corps of Engineers collection for Jennins Randolph Lake, find them on Facebook.