Helena Scouts Collect 1,600 Christmas Trees to Boost Canyon Ferry Perch Habitat

Hundreds of Christmas trees lined the banks of Canyon Ferry Reservoir near the silos this January, stacked and staged by Helena scouts who turned the city's post-holiday curbside haul into fish habitat.

Scout Troop 214 led the collection effort, gathering roughly 1,600 trees from Helena curbs as part of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks' "Pines for Perch" program. Troops 207, 217, 218 and 228 joined them on site to prepare the trees for deployment at Canyon Ferry Reservoir, where yellow perch need structure to spawn and survive their first weeks of life.

The preparation process is methodical: scouts drill a hole in the stump of each tree, thread a cable through the connected stumps to form a line, then add cinder blocks between trees to keep the weighted chain anchored underwater. In April, the Montana Department of Natural Resources will drop those lines into the reservoir by helicopter.

FWP senior fisheries technician Troy Humphrey, who oversees the operation, said the scouts have fundamentally changed what the program can accomplish. "The scouts are amazing, that's really been a game changer for us," Humphrey said. "It took us the better part of a week, whereas we're gonna make about a half day of it now."

The efficiency gain translates directly into ecological output. Canyon Ferry is a large, open reservoir with limited natural structure across much of its basin, and yellow perch depend on woody debris and hard substrate to deposit egg masses in shallow water. Each cable-strung line of Christmas trees dropped to the right depth creates a perch nursery where none existed before, which means more habitat installed before spawning season and more juvenile perch surviving their first season.

Scout Carson Burright said the scale of the job made the troop's role obvious. "Just them alone, this would be such a long job for them," Burright said. "Just having all this extra help really contributes to having a whole community work together."

Scoutmaster Doug Wheeler said community service is central to what he wants Troop 214 to carry out of experiences like this one. "For me, community service is a huge thing to try to instill in the scouts because I think the more people that learn to find it important to help the community, the better our community is gonna be," Wheeler said.

Scouts Kaari Hitz and Simon Jensen, working alongside the FWP crew near the silos, offered their own assessments. "I love doing it, I feel like it really benefits everybody and not just me," Hitz said. Jensen kept it simpler: "Nice breeze, treeing, it's fun."

Officials noted one concern heading into the April deployment: the troop's haul of roughly 1,600 trees this year represented a decline from the number of donated trees the program typically receives. No historical baseline was provided, but the drop signals that community participation in curbside tree donations may be softening at a time when the program's reach depends on volume.