San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Christmas trees’ new life as fish habitat
Ever wonder where Christmas goes to die?
If you said SantaCon or a Berkeley hills holiday party, you’re close — but no cigar.
Right now, outside local Fish and Wildlife offices in far Northern California, crinkly discarded Christmas trees are piling up. But unlike most of the sad arboreal vestiges of Christmas past, these select few trees aren’t about to become mulch. Instead, the department’s “fish improvement shop” in Yreka (Siskiyou County) will sink 200 or so old firs and spruces into state-managed waters. It’s a move, ecologists say, that will create valuable fish habitat — and boost fishing, too.
“The ‘habitat structures’ ” — that’s Fish and Wildlife-ese for sunken tangle of old Christmas trees — “provide juvenile fish with refuge, and adult fish tend to congregate around the structures in the hope of ambushing prey,” says department spokesman Kyle Orr. Your sunken old Christmas tree, in other words, is a win for the ecosystem and a win for anglers, too.
As any good bass-master knows, submerged fallen trees along lakeshores can be prize spots for fishing. That’s because, ecologists say, any sort of sunken wooden object — from manzanita plants to huge pines — is appealing to fish. They lay eggs and nest underneath downed branches, then feed on the smaller creatures attracted to the security and shade of the structure. A large downed tree, according to the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, will degrade over the course of several hundred years and in that time attract a whole community of fish, with 15 or so species calling the thing home at any given time.
How do ecologists know that dumping Christmas trees into a lake is as effective a habitat as natural tree felling?
“Our biologists go dive ’em,” says Joseph Rightmier, a fish habitat supervisor in the Yreka office. If diving’s not an option, though, “occasionally we do hook and line sampling — but that’s a tough day, lemme tell you,” he jokes.
The fish improvement shop usually does two Christmas tree habitat dunkings a year, Rightmier says, and municipalities across the country, ranging from Alameda County to the state of Montana, often do the same. Right now, the program is in the collection phase, Rightmier says. The department will wait a month or two for all the browned, sad Christmas trees around Redding and Siskiyou County to come in, then they’ll be hauled to a yet-unnamed reservoir in Lassen County.
Assuming the waters in the far north of the state remain icy this winter, Rightmier says depositing the trees into the lake will be easy enough, too.
“If you can catch the reservoir when it’s frozen over thick enough, then we’re able to do this all with a quad ATV and just tow the trees out on the ice,” he says.
Last year, however, the waters of the Green Springs Reservoir in Modoc County weren’t icy enough to support all-terrain vehicles, so barges had to be called in to submerge the trees in the early summer heat. The trees were weighed down with cables and within a day or two fishermen were out on the water to reap the benefits. “They were quite successful, too,” Rightmier says.
That’s the beauty of the work, he adds. The fish do well and the anglers do, too. And although the department doesn’t advertise the exact locations of the new habitats, “if the public wants to inquire, we’re more than happy to steer ’em in the right direction,” he adds.
David Ferry is a freelance writer in Los Angeles. Email: travel@sfchronicle.com
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