CHESTERTOWN — Washington College’s Center for Environment & Society is offering an alternative way to dispose of your holiday tree.
Instead of sending trees 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 in 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 St. 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, Jan. 20.
The habitat build is only 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. This 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 about 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 Lands Project’s work, and that of the Center for Environment & Society, can be found at https://www.washcoll.edu/learn-by-doing/ces/index.php.