Fish Habitat from Old Christmas Trees
On Monday the 27th of January, Big Oak staff and some volunteers from the community created fish habitat out of old Christmas trees on Old Timber Lake. When the ice starts to melt in the spring the trees will sink into the lake and fish will be able to seek shelter (from predators) and lay their eggs in these structures. This was such a cool project to be a part of, and I applaud whoever decided to start this. It is a 'kill two birds with one stone' type of project due to the old Christmas trees being recycled while creating new wildlife habitat!
We started off by taking all of the tags off of the trees and drilling holes in the base of the trunks. We made a pile of these trees and then planned out where we were going to put them.
We then dragged trees in twos and threes to different spots on the ice, fairly spaced out, from each other.
We then brought out old cinder blocks and placed them next to each pile. After that we took wire and wrapped it around and through the trees. We did this so that when the ice melts the trees sink to the bottom instead of potentially floating at the top.
We set up these trees on two different points around the lake. I would say we placed about 78 trees out on the ice today. The fish species that we had in mind during this project was the Crappie and Bluegill. They have the potential to benefit the most from the addition of these habitat structures. This project was very cool, and I thoroughly enjoyed being a part of it.
-Sierra
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