Is one of your annual holiday season traditions getting the whole family out into the woods on Thanksgiving so everyone can trudge through snow and watch Dad cut down a Christmas tree? If not, it could be!
The Kenai National Wildlife Refuge has announced that it will open for Christmas tree cutting from Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, Nov. 28, through Christmas Day.
“It’s something we do every year, and a lot of folks are used to it,” said Kenai National Wildlife Refuge Deputy Manager Steve Miller. “But if you’re if you’re new to the community, and we do offer up any of those spruce trees out there that are at least 150 feet away from a road or a trail or a campground that you could make it your own Christmas tree if you’d like to this year.”
Trees are free for personal use, with a limit of one per household. They may not be taller than 20 feet. Trees may be taken anywhere on the Refuge with hand tools except within 150 feet of a road, lake, stream, trail, campground, or picnic area.
Miller says the annual tradition of allowing people to cut down trees has no positive or negative impact on the forest, and it’s just something the KNWR enjoys offering to the community. “It’s a natural progression of forest. You get some of the hardwood trees first, the spruce trees, or the later ones to start colonizing areas. So it’s just natural regeneration there. And for as many trees as get taken off, it really has no positive or negative benefit.”
No tree-cutting is permitted in the Refuge Headquarters/Visitor Center area and along Ski Hill Road.
The public is requested to trim the stumps as close to the ground as possible for aesthetic reasons.
