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Christmas trees for fish habitat? In ND, no

You may be wondering what to do with your live Christmas tree, when the holiday is over.

You might be thinking of giving it to the North Dakota Game and Fish department, for use as fish habitat.

But Game and Fish stopped taking trees several years ago.

Fisheries chief Greg Power said they used to use several trees to make “Christmas Tree reefs.” That was tried in certain lakes. But Power said Game and Fish found out these were not very successful as habitat. And Power said it takes a lot of work to put a Christmas tree reef in.

"The network of volunteers that once were there went away real fast, after they saw how much work was involved," Power said.

Power said some of the trees would go into the water complete with tinsel.

"It basically becomes litter," said Power.

Power said trees will float, so cement was used to keep the trees down. 

"It doesn't mean that in the future we won't do a project like this," Power said. "But based on our past experiences, they haven't turned out to do a whole lot."

Power said you can still see some remnants of reefs that were built at Lake Audubon, north of Bismarck.

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