Juneau residents can now cut down Christmas trees in designated areas as early as Thanksgiving.
“We’re part of Christmas creep,” Assembly member Alicia Hughes-Skandijs joked at a Lands, Housing and Economic Development Committee meeting on Monday.
The city lets each household remove one live evergreen tree per year from certain areas of municipal land. But in previous years, people had to wait until Dec. 1.
“There’s a handful of families that include it as part of their Thanksgiving tradition, so we made that update,” said Dan Bleidorn, the city’s lands and resources manager.
Trees must be harvested at least 50 feet away from hiking trails in areas designated on the city’s wood-cutting map. Those areas are near Fritz Cove and False Outer Point on North Douglas and near Bridget Cove and Sunshine Cove, between mile markers 33 and 38 on Glacier Highway.
According to the policy, Christmas trees must be cut at ground level. Residents can also harvest trees for firewood in the same designated areas. Unlike Christmas trees, those trees need to be dead or down.
The last day to harvest a Christmas tree in the city’s wood cutting areas is Dec. 31.
The U.S. Forest Service also allows each Juneau household to harvest one tree per year – at any time of year – from some Tongass National Forest land without a permit. Trees can’t be taken from developed Forest Service sites, which includes Auke Village, Lena Beach and all of the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area.
According to the Forest Service, trees should be no larger than seven inches in diameter at the stump. They ask that trees be cut within 12 inches of the ground, and as close to the ground as possible.
For both municipal and Forest Service land, trees shouldn’t be taken from muskeg areas because it can take a long time for them to grow back.
