Turn your Christmas tree into a home for local wildlife

Washington College’s Center for Environment and Society (CES) is offering an alternative way to recycle your holiday tree. Instead of sending them to the landfill, the staff at CES is asking for donations of your old holiday trees to build extra bird habitat. As part of the Natural Lands Project, the trees will be arranged in brushy hedgerows and provide extra cover for overwintering wildlife. Thanks to community support, 94 trees were donated last year and were just time to offer some cover to bobwhite quails and other birds in snowy January.

Donated trees can be brought to Semans-Griswold Environmental Hall at 485 S. Cross Street in Chestertown and placed at the end of the driveway to the right of the building. Signage will mark the spot. Donated trees should have all decorations including ribbon, wire, and tinsel removed prior to drop off. Trees can be donated through Monday, January 20.

The habitat build is just a small part of the work the Natural Lands Project conducts restoring buffers and native habitat along the Chester River to help re-establish bobwhite quail and improve water quality. The land they manage encompasses nearly 5,000 acres of diverse ecological communities just minutes from Washington’s main campus in Chestertown. It includes 2.5 miles of Chester River shoreline, a 90-acre freshwater lake, multiple streams and seasonal wetlands, 1,200 acres of forest, 3,000 acres of agricultural fields, and 228 acres of restored native prairie with natural grasses that have allowed northern bobwhite quail to flourish. The property also features 50 acres of managed, successional habitat for one of the most active bird-banding stations on the East Coast, handling approximately 14,000 birds a year. It serves as an important stopover habitat for shorebirds and is home to thousands of migrating and wintering ducks and geese each year.

More information on the Natural Land Project’s work, and that of the Center for Environment and Society, can be found at https://www.washcoll.edu/learn-by-doing/ces/index.php.