Now Christmas is over; you’ve surely been faced with that unenviable task of trying to remove your Christmas tree from the living room.

All this of course while attempting to avoid the carnage that comes with a tree more than ready to shed its needles. But what about those Christmas trees that were never destined to make it into a family home this year?

Every year hundreds of Christmas trees are left unwanted at farms across the Bournemouth area – these trees usually being left to go to seed, rendering them useless in the future.

At Arne Nature Reserve hundreds of Christmas trees were chopped down and left to decompose simply because they were a species not usually found in the United Kingdom.

Spotting an opportunity, the Students’ Union at Bournemouth University Conservation Rangers team stepped in.

The SUBU Conservation Rangers are a group of students passionate about green issues and the local environment. During term time these students give up their time to assist with projects.

Between 2011 and 2014 the Rangers worked with Dorset Police to clear up Merick Park, and more recently they joined the Dorset Wildlife Trust and Bournemouth Council Rangers to clear up heathland in the local area.

Knowing many students and staff at the University were still to source a Christmas tree, the Conservation Rangers collected the unwanted species of tree and sold them at SUBU’s very first Christmas Fair at the start of December.

Bournemouth University student Tom Dando was key in the organisation of the event and said: “We decided to sell the trees as a way of recycling natural resources that would otherwise have been burnt and gone to waste unnecessarily”.

He added: “By selling them we were able to raise money to support local nature whilst at the same time providing some festive joy to the students of Bournemouth University”.

With these trees available to students and staff at a knockdown price, all unwanted trees soon found a home for Christmas.

All the money raised from the sale of the tress has gone to the local Dorset Wildlife Trust, helping to conserve the habitats of our local wildlife.

You can follow @SUBUGreen on Twitter for all the latest news on SUBU’s Conservation projects.