Don't throw out that Christmas tree just yet.

It could soon become the future home for Kentucky fish.

Thanks to the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife and a program called Christmas for the Fishes.

Christmas for the Fishes is where we're taking in citizens donations of their used a real Christmas tree.

We're looking for real trees, not artificial.

We're using that for fish habitat.

Many of our our lakes across the state.

These trees make some really good habitat for fish.

This habitat draws in predator fish.

Forage fish creates feeding areas.

It creates spawning areas and also hiding places for a lot of fish.

So it provides that habitat that fish need.

And as our lakes age again, this is natural material.

It does decompose, go away over time.

So we have to do this on some occurrence.

So this is a great way we can collect some of some of this material that we can use of the legs very quickly.

And this is where also people with the the state can, you know, get involved with it.

And most of the lakes, we use them and they last about 5 to 7 years, maybe ten sometimes depending on the size.

We have 29 drop off sites across the state.

All these sites are unmanned.

And basically you can go at your convenience and drop these off.

We recommend that you go during daylight hours when it's light out and just add your tree to the power we currently have for our district.

We'll be moving them to a Benji coming like this year.

That'll be the main one.

We will probably use some and a couple of the other lakes, but it will be dependent on how many trees we get because we've got to get a number of trees we want to use at this particular lake.

And as we get over that, we'll start distributing those to the other lakes, depending on how many we get.

We've collected over 32,000 over the last seven years.

So it's been a very popular program and we really appreciate the support that we've got from the people of Kentucky.

I think it's fun and that we're, one, providing some habitat that's useful for fish that they can use and the benefit it also provides some opportunities for anglers to be able to go in and catch some fish off also of some of these sites.

So it's really neat that we're doing something that benefits both the fish in the lake, but also can benefit some of the fishermen that fish the lake.

Good idea to find a nearby drop off location to donate your Christmas tree, go to the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife website.

That's at f w dot k y dot gov org of the program ends January 15th.