Texas placed 250 used Christmas trees on South Padre Island; their branches are trapping sand to protect sea-turtle eggs from flooding

Needle in a haystack, indeed: Texas is using leftover Christmas trees to create a sea turtle’s ultimate defense system. As reported by KRGV, the nonprofit organization Sea Turtle Inc. received some 250 donated Christmas trees from the residents of the Rio Grande Valley region and placed them in the dunes adjacent to its hatchery area to prepare for the upcoming spring nesting season for the sea turtles along South Padre Island.

It should be noted that the trees were neither up for decoration nor sent to the trash. Instead, they will serve as part of an ingenious plan to intercept wind-driven sand in their branches in order to make the dunes higher, larger, and stronger before the arrival of Kemp’s ridley sea turtles from the Gulf to lay their eggs.

A wind trap


Dunes do not develop overnight; in order to grow, they require something which slows down the wind enough to allow sand particles to settle down. That is precisely the idea behind sand fencing, but apparently an old Christmas tree performs a similar function at a much lower price. Conservation Technician Lindsey Czopek stated that the objective here is to let the wind blow the sand particles at South Padre Island to fill up in between the branches and form the dune layer by layer instead of covering the whole tree at once.

The use of Christmas trees for stabilization of dunes is not just a recent development in Texas; it is a well-established coastal management strategy. According to a U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center study titled “Coastal Sand Dunes: A Review of Management Strategies for Dune Stabilization,” coastal managers have been using this technique to stabilize dunes with old Christmas trees for more than 70 years. During the 1980s, in North Carolina and Florida, thousands of Christmas trees were being recycled per year specifically for this purpose.

It’s much the same in New Jersey each year as well. As reported by the Rutgers State Policy Lab, New Jersey has been adding abandoned trees to its dune systems for more than half a century, and the size of the dune was among the best indicators of Hurricane Sandy with the least damage. It seems that the larger the dune, the smaller the damage.

Why do the sea turtles need the extra sand?

This isn't simply a matter of safeguarding beachfront property. Sea Turtle Inc. excavates eggs from wild nests found during beach patrols and relocates them to a secured hatchery corral near the facility, and it is the dunes immediately surrounding this hatchery that the Christmas trees are reinforcing. The larger and higher the dunes become, the lower the chances are that there will be any flooding or erosion in the nests that Kemp's ridley sea turtles create in the sand during springtime.

According to the (NOAA) Fishery, Kemp's Ridley sea turtle was classified as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act of 1970 in the United States and continues to be the smallest and the rarest sea turtle existing in the world, with most of its nesting sites located at just one strip of Mexican Gulf coast and a couple of beaches in Texas, including the South Padre Island. Flooding may kill off an entire nest full of eggs without even giving them the chance to hatch, and thus a stronger dune is directly proportional to hatchlings succeeding in reaching the water.

The part that deserves everyone's attention

And here is the more cynical part, since this is definitely not an all-in-all solution. The Christmas tree dunes can be made only if the process is carried out flawlessly. The coastal authorities of both Massachusetts and North Carolina have published guidelines according to which improper placement of Christmas trees can lead to more erosion rather than protection from it.

The state of Massachusetts has practically abandoned this approach due to unsuccessful experience through the years. The success of the Sea Turtle Inc. project lies in the fact that it is a localized effort conducted by qualified conservation specialists who know exactly where and how to place the trees.

The takeaway

This is a rare instance in which a simple, community-level behavior like not dumping the discarded trees in landfills is having an astounding impact because it leads to something tangible: higher dunes, less flooding of nests, and increased survival of one of the world’s most endangered species of turtle. This is not just a smart idea; this is just 250 dead trees working their magic, unpaid and unsung, along the South Padre Island in Texas.