Disposing of your Christmas trees with a purpose

The Fresno Chapter of Walleyes Unlimited, Montana Fish and Wildlife and Parks and the City of Havre plan to collect Christmas trees for the purpose of enhancing fishing at the Fresno Reservoir.

Starting Thursday, people can discard their Christmas trees at Memorial Park on the 100 Block of Fifth Avenue to be used in the spawning habitat project.

Since 2017, the collective has been collecting and bundling discarded trees to create artificial spawning reefs to increase perch populations. Perch are a primary forage fish as well as a game species.

The spawning will also increase food sources for walleye and pike, FWP Fish Biologist Cody Nagel said.

“What we are essentially trying to create is structures out there for perch, and perch like to use vegetation,” Nagel said. “If there is enough vegetation there they’ll do it naturally. With the fluctuation that occurs on Fresno, these structures increase the amount of available habitats for perch, and they essentially drape their eggs over the branches and that is what the objective is.”

The big thing, in terms of this project, is for spawning habitats, but a secondary benefit of that added structure is to provide cover and rearing habitats and that would be utilized by all fish. Walleye, crappie, perch, pike, shiners, all of these types of fish would use all of these man made habitats later in the year, Nagel said.

“The perch usually will use those structures in the spring, late April, early May,” Nagel said. “As those eggs hatch and those fish begin to grow they will start to hang around and utilize that cover to avoid predation by bigger fish, well into late summer and into the winter time if those structures stay inundated by water.”

Nagel estimates FWP gets around 100-150 trees annually to build these habitats, and, in the past, the city of Havre has put out a garbage bin at Memorial Park on the 1100 Block of Fifth Avenue, and they rely on people to give their discarded Christmas tress a new purpose.