Enjoying Outside - Recycling Christmas Trees for Aquatic Wildlife

Kristie Ehrhardt • January 9, 2025


Many of the houses in my neighborhood have sad, once-loved Christmas trees lying in the gutter waiting for the “claw” to come pick them up. Green-wasting your post holiday tree is a great idea, it’ll either be composted or run through a chipper and used as ground cover at a school or park but there are other, productive ways to recycle it too!

 

Recycling your holiday tree for aquatic wildlife is a creative and rewarding way to provide habitat for fish and other aquatic wildlife. Various agencies collaborate on local and national projects to enhance and improve aquatic habitat. Collected trees are weighted down with cables and submerged to provide habitat for fish and other aquatic wildlife. The submerged trees provide spawning habitat and refuge for young fish by furnishing hiding spots from predators and shade from sun. The sunken trees also supply a place for algae and tiny aquatic invertebrates which are a food source for the young fish and larger invertebrates. By supplying habitat for young and smaller bait fish, larger fish are attracted to the areas and may upgrade your favorite fishing hole.

 

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife Fish Habitat Technicians collect discarded Christmas trees that will be used for underwater structures in waterways for aquatic wildlife. The gaps between the branches of the upcycled trees provide shelter for young fish and attract larger fish which creates more exciting opportunities for anglers. Fish find and occupy the underwater structures very quickly after they’ve been introduced indicating that they appreciate them. The California Conservation Corps (CCC) teamed up with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and a Chico Boy Scout troop to create several new fish habitat structures near Lake Oroville and Thermalito Afterbay that used over 1,500 donated recycled Christmas trees. Projects and partnerships such as this have been happening for over 30 years throughout California.

 

Some other Northern California projects include fish habitat structures in Juanita, Orr and Trout Lakes from trees collected in Alturas and Yreka as well as a project in Green Springs Reservoir in Modoc County from trees collected in Siskiyou County. The City of Chester is also working on a project in Lassen County. Farther south, Riverside County also works with CDFW to collect trees from county landfills to be used for local fish habitat enhancements.

 

And it’s not just being done in California. The Alleghany National Forest in Pennsylvania has been recycling and submerging Christmas trees since 1983 and has recycled nearly 20,000 trees in the Alleghany River. The recycle program in the Wayne National Forest in Ohio collects over 240 Christmas trees and ties them together in bundles to enhance habitat in local lakes. The Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in Wisconsin has used Christmas trees to provide fish habitat for many years and the Hoosier National Forest in Indiana has placed trees in five local bodies of water to improve fish habitat.

 

The trees need to be free of decorations, lights and any flocking but people seem happy to help by dropping their retired trees off at designated locations rather than plopping them in the street. The trees would have ended up in the landfill or a wood chipper and by upcycling them as fish habitat it not only gives the trees another purpose, it helps aquatic wildlife and those enjoying the outdoors as well.


-Kristie Ehrhardt (kehrhardt@tuleyome.org)

Tuleyome Land Conservation Program Manager

RECENT ARTICLES

Beavers, otters, and more – new Conaway Ranch game camera footage!

By Geoff Benn • June 4, 2026
A beaver at Conaway Ranch We’ve got new footage from our game cameras at Conaway Ranch! This camera site was chosen by 4 th graders from Dingle Elementary during a recent field trip to Conaway. The camera is near the otter slide we’ve previously filmed, but is a few feet away from the entrance to the slide, allowing us to film the animals as they approach. We saw beaver, otter, a fox, a raccoon, and more! Click here to watch the video . Tuleyome works with Conaway Preservation Group to offer educational programs at Conaway Ranch, including programs for K-12 groups and the general public. If you have any questions about the game camera footage or our programs at Conaway, please reach out to Education Associate Geoff Benn at gbenn@tuleyome.org.

Policy Corner: It’s Time to Fight for Our Public Lands

June 4, 2026
The current administration has released its proposed budget for the 2027 fiscal year. It proposes drastic cuts to our public land management agencies. The proposed budget would significantly reduce funding for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), including a 34% cut to its total budget, a 27% staff cut, a 76% cut to the National Conservation Lands, which encompass 38 million acres of protected public lands, a 61% cut to recreation management (including campsites and trails), and total elimination of funding for cultural resources and wilderness management. It also would shift priorities towards extractive uses of public lands instead of conservation and clean energy. The administration’s budget would also drastically cut funding to the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), eliminate several offices, state and federal research stations (six in California) and transfer all fire fighting to BLM. Notably, in the face of all these cuts, the budget would increase funding for extractive industries; funding for timber sales would increase 450%. The reductions and policy changes would impair these agencies’ abilities to protect public lands, cultural resources, fresh water sources, and wildlife, while also impairing access to them and recreation on them. The President’s budget is now in Congress, where committees in both the Senate and the House of Representatives are amending and voting on the bills in preparation for full House and Senate votes. Now is the time to take action for our public lands and the environment by urging Congress to reject the proposed budget and maintain funding for BLM, USFS, and programs that protect and steward our public lands. Let your representatives know that you oppose the cuts to BLM and USFS and the rollbacks to our public land protections. And let them know why these special places are important to them. You can voice your opinions to Congress in multiple ways. You can: Call their offices Send a letter to Congress - we’ve pulled together a template for you to use, but don’t forget to let them know why public lands are important to you – download sample letter here Contact them on social media Meet with a representative in their District offices. Don’t know how to reach them, go to Congress.gov and find their phone numbers, addresses, district offices, websites and so much more if you’re interested. Now is the time to speak up for our public lands! Mary Lamborn (Communications Intern) and Sandra Schubert (Executive Director)

Monumental Questions - Another Monumental Vegetable?

By Kristie Ehrhardt • June 4, 2026
You betcha! Wild carrot, also known as Queen Anne’s Lace, is a common site within the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument region. With its straight and sturdy stalk, bright green, frilly leaves and white, flat-topped flower clusters, it is identifiable even from the limited viewing scope of a traveling car. Queen Anne’s Lace ( Daucus carota ) belongs to the Apiaceae (carrot) family. All members of this family display flower clusters arranged in an upside-down umbrella shape called an umbel. It is native to Europe and is the plant that tasty cultivated carrots originated from. It was brought to North America for its medicinal purposes and has since naturalized across the continent in disturbed and natural areas in mountains, valleys and coastal areas. It can be so prolific that it outcompetes native plants and can also be mildly toxic to livestock. Queen Anne’s Lace is an herbaceous biennial (it doesn’t flower until its second year and then dies) that can reach up to four feet tall in optimum conditions. The stem of the plant is bright green, straight and sturdy and is covered in short, coarse hairs which is a very helpful identifier. I recently learned a clever and helpful quip that I will never forget: Queen Anne has hairy legs (referring to the hair along the stems of the plant)! The tiny, white flowers all originate from the same point and splay out in an airy, flat topped cluster (umbel). Another identifying feature is that oftentimes (but not always) the flower umbels often have a single dark purple flower in the center of the cluster. This purple flower is not always present but when it is it can be used to positively identify the plant as Queen Anne’s lace. The leaves are finely divided which gives them a lacy appearance and look almost identical to our cultivated carrot plants. Although wild carrots are edible, the whitish tap root isn’t as robust or flavorful as the cultivated carrots we are used to. Warning! There are plants such as poison hemlock that are incredibly similar looking so eating things in nature is never advised unless you can absolutely identify them! Poison hemlock has basically the same growth pattern as wild carrot however the stem of poison hemlock lacks the tiny hairs and mature plants have very definite purple splotches up and down the stems. All parts of poison hemlock are toxic but it is particularly potent in the seeds and roots. Poison hemlock is notoriously known as the poison that killed the Greek philosopher Socrates. Edible cousins of wild carrot include plants such as caraway, celery, parsley and parsnips. Although the root of the wild carrot plant is edible, contact with the sap may produce an allergic reaction in some individuals that are sensitive to it. Native pollinators such as butterflies and bees appreciate the abundance of flowers for their nectar. Wild carrot is currently blooming in all its glory so keep an eye out for it on your next trip to our favorite monument!