‘Another life’

By NATHAN DEAL

Nathan.Deal@gjsentinel.com

E ach holiday season, especially military holidays, families and friends of veterans who have died leave wreaths on their loved ones’ graves, serving as a symbol of their continuing presence in their lives after death.

In Grand Junction, the wreaths themselves have their own lives and stories that persist beyond their original use.

On Thursday, Western Slope members of the Colorado Elks Association took wreaths that had been gracing grave sites at the Veterans Memorial Cemetery of Western Colorado to Highline Lake State Park outside Loma.

Wreaths were attached to 3-foot-by-3-foot PVC pipes and cinderblocks, then sent to the bottom of the Highline Lake.

This unique, and rather odd, exercise has a specific purpose.

The wreaths will serve as habitat structures for fish. This is the second year of this initiative, the result of collaboration between the Elks Association and Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

This makes for a much more useful end for the wreaths.

“Normally, what would happen before we started doing this is they would take all the wreaths off the graves and put them in the landfill,” said Delta Elks Lodge member Willie Gordon. “The biologist from Parks and Wildlife found out that these wreaths, once they go from green down to brown, can be dropped into the water and make a great habitat for the fish. … They tell us where to put everything, so we just sink these units into the water and hope they stay in the water.”

This initiative is an extension of efforts that have been ongoing on the Front Range and in other parts of the country for about the past five years. Gordon said similar efforts have taken place at lakes in cities such as Pueblo and Littleton.

The Elks Association received the wreaths from the national organization Wreaths Across America.

“It actually is a community project we’re involved in,” said Grand Junction Elks Lodge member Terri Carter. “The Elks are always very community- minded, it helps the veterans, and it recognizes the veterans. It kind of gives a full life to those wreaths. They’re placed on veterans’ graves around Christmastime. We take them off, take off the bows and wires and everything else, and we bring them out here to have another life as a fish habitat.”

Once the habitat structures were assembled near Highline Lake on Thursday, Elks Association members boarded boats paddled by CPW staff, went out onto the waters and dropped the structures into the lake, where they each sank about 20 feet to the bottom of the lake.

CPW Area Aquatic Biologist Kristina Morben described how dropping these wreaths into the lake helps its ecosystem.

“By dropping these wreaths down into the water, we’re creating much more habitat for the fish species that are out there. Fish really like the habitat,” Morben said.

“It gives them a way to hide from predators and a place to stalk for other fish if they’re fish-eating fish. What these habitat structures are going to do is provide that for them. Highline doesn’t have a whole lot of structure in it, so these guys will give them that structure. They did it last year for the first year. This year, it’s another really cool way for us to get some good habitat in there and also provide a cool opportunity for reuse of these wreaths.”

Completed custom-made fish habitats, above, made from wreaths that once graced grave sites at the Veteran Memorial Cemetery of Western Colorado wait to be dropped into Highline Lake State Park on Thursday. The program to recycle the wreaths into fish habitats is in its second year in Grand Junction and is a collaboration between the Elks Association and Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Tony Elkins, top, loads an armful of Christmas wreaths onto one of the fish habitats. Below right, Cody Smith, left, and Kristina Morben, Aquatic Biologist with CPW, drop a fish habitat into Highline Lake.

Photos by LARRY ROBINSON/ The Daily Sentinel

ABOVE: Colorado Wildlife officers and Elks members head out on Highline Lake to drop custom-built fish habitats onto the lake floor. RIGHT: One of the fish habitats made from recycled wreaths sinks to the bottom.