THUNDER BAY — The Nature Conservancy of Canada has a suggestion for a belated Christmas gift for backyard wildlife.
Instead of bringing Christmas trees to one of the City of Thunder Bay's nine tree-recycling sites, it says homeowners might want to consider parking them in the backyard or garden.
Dan Kraus, NCC's senior conservation biologist, says leaving the tree outside after Christmas can provide many benefits for animals and birds, including shelter on cold nights and during storms.
Kraus suggests propping the tree near another tree or against the fence.
"Evergreens offer a safe place for birds to rest while they visit your feeder," Kraus said.
"Another benefit is that if you leave the tree in your garden over the summer, it will continue to provide habitat for wildlife and improve your soil as it decomposes."
By spring, the tree will have lost most of its needles, but Kraus said it can still be useful.
Tree branches may be cut off and placed where spring flowers are starting to emerge, while the trunk may be placed on the soil but not on top of the flowers.
"The branches and trunk provide habitat, shelter wildflowers, hold moisture and help build the soil, mimicking what happens with dead trees and branches in a forest," Kraus said.
Trunks can be helpful to insects including some pollinators that burrow into the wood.
But since spruce and balsam fir have very low rot resistance, they break down quickly when exposed to the elements.
Kraus said the more contact the cut branches and trunk have with the elements, the quicker they will decompose.
By fall, the decomposition will already start turning them into soil, he said.
The Nature Conservancy of Canada is the country's leading not-for-profit, private land conservation organization.
Since 1962, it and its partners have helped to protect 14 million hectares (35 million acres) coast to coast.
