According to Clark Griswold, you have two choices when it comes to selecting your Christmas tree.
Your first option is to go to a tree lot: “They invented Christmas tree lots,” Griswold says in the 1989 movie “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” “because people forgot how to have a fun old-fashioned family Christmas and are satisfied with scrawny, dead overpriced trees that have no special meaning.”
Instead, he advises, “to do what your forefathers did.” Which is, “walk into the woods, pick out that special tree and cut it down with your bare hands.”
In Wrangell, that means if you want a real tree in your living room, you’ll probably need to venture out into the woods and find one for yourself. Just make sure you follow the U.S. Forest Service’s rules and regulations.
For starters, there are no permits required to cut down a tree in the Tongass National Forest, as long as it is for personal use. All households are allowed to remove just one Christmas tree per year.
There are also “no regulations on what tree species or size to cut,” according to Paul Robbins, the Tongass public affairs officer. “However, there is some guidance the Forest Services provides to (prevent) damaging the ecosystem.”
For starters, any tree at a Forest Service recreation site or any tree within 330 feet of a bald eagle nest should not be cut down. The same rules apply for trees within 100 feet of salmon streams or roads.
Robbins recommends avoiding trees larger than seven inches in diameter (measured at the stump) and suggests cutting trees as close to the ground as possible. Cutting the top off a large tree is prohibited — so is cutting down a tree, realizing you want a different one, and letting the original tree rot on the forest floor.
In order to protect muskeg areas, Robbins said trees in those areas are not to be harvested either.
Lastly, any cut tree “cannot be sold, bartered or used in any commercial-type exchange for goods.”
For any questions, Robbins suggests reaching out to the Forest Service. The Wrangell Ranger District offices can be reached at 907-874-2323.
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