On Monday we got our first mission from Chompers to face our fears about some misunderstood animals that live in our state. We all learned about myths of some ‘scary’ animals and where these myths might have come from. We faced our fears in the river as we caught critters like leeches and crawdad and blood-worms, oh my!
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On Tuesday we were visited by some scary, scaly, special guests! Our friends from Nature’s Educators brought amazing rehabilitated snakes for our campers to view and ask questions about. We learned so much about native snakes, why they might seem scary but how cool they actually are! We even got to see a wild river snake at critter crawl too!

On Wednesday we learned all about how animals use their senses to best help them at different times of day. Some animals like bats need to rely on their senses of hearing and smell to navigate their way through the night sky. Then we played some games to learn the differences between poison and venom. Thankfully, none of the many critters we caught at critter crawl are neither poisonous nor venomous.

​On Thursday we had a hot and fun field day where we challenged ourselves to learn and play as some scary animals that adapt to their surroundings like dragonflies, leeches, and snakes! Over and through the obstacle course we worked together and shared so many great moments. Then we all went together to Critter Crawl and found the most critters all week!

On Friday we dressed up as grasshoppers to learn all about adaptation and then inside we learned about how different cultures eat them! We talked all about how much water it takes to produce the normal and abnormal food we eat. Then at graduation we all celebrated the great time we had at camp this week, all the new friends we made, and fears we faced!

April was quite the busy month here at the Greenway Foundation, as earth month always should be! Not only were we doing our regular thing working towards a cleaner South Platte River for all of Denver, but we also got to host and table at lots of awesome events through our SPREE programs. We take a great deal of pride in our environmental education department, and so when there is a chance to hang out with kids and talk about beavers we are all in! Here is a little recap of each event and well as some of the highlights of the events! 

For our first event this month, we kicked it off with a Beaver Bonanza at the Cole Block Party April 16th Easter weekend with our partners! For the event, the SPREE team brought all of the Beaver goods to teach families of the Cole neighborhood all about these awesome creatures and more including our infamous beaver pelt, a replica of beavers skull, as well as pin the tail on the beaver! While pin the tail on the beaver is immensely fun, the biggest hit was our game "Whose Scat is That?" in which kids/families

To celebrate Earth Day, the Greenway Foundation along with our partners hosted a trash clean up for families to volunteer to help clean up the Cherry Creek and South Platte Rivers: to say this event was a success is an understatement. There were over 250 volunteers working super hard to clean up our rivers! Some even went at far as to wade into the river and collect trash and debris that has accumulated in our rivers over the 

After working super hard with our family volunteers, we enjoyed some more time by our super clean river playing games, creating crafts, and overall teaching about the importance of our rivers in Colorado! Families could check out our beaver pelts, old snakes skin, play "whose scat is that?", pin the tail on the beaver, win prizes, and more! We want to give a special thanks to not only our partners that help make this event possible, but of course the volunteers the came out and worked super hard to clean up the river! 

To wrap up our April events, we finished off by tabling at the Westwood block party! With 75 attendees, Chompers and all the usual suspects were there to help teach families all about the important creatures that call the South Platte River home! Of course pin the tail on the beaver and "Whose Scat is That?" were hits among the kids, but we also saw loads of incredible crafts being made and prizes being won! It was so awesome to finish up our April events in the Westwood neighborhood and our SPREE team has a blast chatting with families and teaching kids about our wonderful South Platte River and all the things you can find in it. 
Overall we want to give a big thank you so our partners for putting on these awesome events for us to participate in! Community is so important, and this month at Greenway we really got to feel the power of our community! If you didn't make it to an event keep an eye on our social media for info on more events coming up! 

Happy Earth Day everyone! Each year, on the 22nd of April the world takes a moment to stop, reflect, and appreciate this place we are so lucky to call home. Maybe you spent time in the outdoors, in an urban park or maybe adventuring throughout the beautiful mountains, or maybe reminisced on old outdoor excursions through looking at old photos. Either way, it is important that on days like today, you not only enjoy this place we call home, but also take time to reflect and think about your own relationship with nature and the world around us. That's why at the Greenway Foundation, on this earth day, we are encouraging a deeper dive into what does it really mean to call this planet home? And what does it really mean to celebrate Earth? 
In a wake of daunting environmental issues and potential climate anxiety - it is hard to think about what the cascading impact of individual action is. And as a bustling society here in the United States, we forget that we can have individual relationships with nature that are important to explore. It is easy to feel far away from it at times, or maybe pushed a side. It can be easy to forget that we are nature, and that it is good to care about the world and believe in change, even when there are a lot of variables out of most individuals control. But at the Greenway Foundation, we have always believed in the power of community, the power of the integration of natural and urban settings, and the power of curiosity. That is why we can't stop talking about Denver parks, because it shows that nature is never too far! Our SPREE programs works to evoke curiosity in children about the world around them - and we do this because we know that individual certainly can make a large difference. 
As this earth day comes to a close and the sun starts to set, maybe pull out a journal and take some moments to reflect on your own relationship with nature, and maybe why we are lucky to have our Earth, this place we call home. 

Tuesday was quite the exciting day for The Greenway Foundation since we finally got to hear from the teams that participated in this year's Clean Water Challenge. Each year the Greenway Foundation and other partners/sponsors challenges undergraduate students to engineer a proposed solutions to an issue impacting Colorado waterways. This year, we got to hear from two teams of seniors from the Colorado School of Mines who gave presentations about their proposed solutions to this years challenge; how to reduce pollutants from Colorado waterways.     

of E.coli frequently exceeds the state recreational standard of 126 CFU/100mL. When levels exceed this standard, waterways are no longer safe for recreational use for humans, pets, and other animals. Their design was a combined media filtration and UV ​system set to reduce E.coli levels to less than the state recreational standard. As shown above, the system this team designed is a passive treatment system that utilizes pre-existing infrastructure that would house the entire system. Scattered throughout the Cherry Creek River is these lock structures that adds infrastructure to be used as retaining walls for the system.
Their design utilizes physical ​vertical filtration methods by running water through a granular media. For their testing, '"Water" you doing?' used sand as their media of choice - but there is still further testing to be done to determine ideal media for system. Water enters the system through openings at top of lock structure. As the water percolates vertically through the media filtration system it will eventually reach the secondary part of the system which treats the contaminated water with a UV light, and then the water can exit the system into the greater Cherry Creek/Confluence Park area. Through testing the system with the Quanti-Tray system for measurements and four different trial groups, all containing greater than the state recreational standard for E.coli, this group found their system to be effective at removing E.coli from waterways to objective standard.
​In general, they found that most of the removal of E.coli occurred at the UV treatment stage; however, with lower flow rates, that granular sand media is able to remove more E.coli from the sample. While the results from the testing are quite promising and exciting, to make this project fully feasible, the group suggested doing further testing on different types of media and UV system, develop systems for backwashing media and for instances of high flow rates. However, we thought their re-use of pre-existing infrastructure to house their system and using low impact passive water treatments to be very innovative! 

The second team we got to here from was team "N&P", who decided to focus their solution on mitigating Nitrogen and Phosphorous levels in Sloan's Lake in Denver. This group wanted to focus on this issue/location because Sloan's like is an important ecological system for Denver waterways, heavily used for recreation, and frequently experiences eutrophication events, and even at times has to be closed due to dangerous levels of excessive nutrients in the system. Eutrophication and nutrient pollution are very dynamic and complex issues that are happening too frequently in bodies of water all over the world, because of this they can be quite daunting to try to solve. 

water column. So Team N&P designed a paddle wheel device, that will travel across the surface of Sloan's lake, using paddles on either side to provide that aeration or mixing to de-stratify Sloan's Lake and make it safe for recreational use year-round. The device, as shown below, would also be connected to SMART software technology that would allow the wheel to self-navigate and connect to docking stations located in low-populated areas around the lake. 
One of the most interesting and exciting things about this proposed solution is that is utilizes solar panels to charge and power the device to function throughout the lake. The group also suggested that their paddle device is scalable and transferable to other lakes throughout Colorado making it have the potential to be useful in other lakes, other than just Sloan's Lake. ​

It was so exciting to hear about these innovative and interesting solutions to dealing with pollution in our waterways! However, only one team could win this years challenge. This year's clean water challenge was a little different since we left the voting up to the audience! The audience voted on two things, their favorite solution, and the solution that would have the greatest impact on Colorado waterways. The winner of audience favorite; Team N&P with their paddle wheel device to mitigate nutrient pollution in Sloan's Lake! Finally, the winner of project to have the greatest impact on Colorado waterways; Team "'Water' you doing?" with their combined filtration and UV system to remove E.coli from Confluence park! Glad everyone was able to experience a victory this challenge, and we will see you next year!

In dealing with the relationship between humans and beavers, it is important to strive for a symbiotic relationship that utilizes adaptive and proactive approaches to dealing with beaver urban destruction. Approaches like putting up barriers, using sand paint, or other natural repellents to make it so unideal situations can be avoided between beavers and humans is an approach I know Chompers would appreciate!. This national beaver day be sure to take a moment to appreciate these wonderful creatures, and keep your eyes peeled in the parks along the South Platte River for Chompers and his other fun friends! 
 
Also don't forget the month of April is all about giving SPREE! Help us educate more Denver Kids about cool creatures like beavers by donating here or look out for opportunities to volunteer at one of our upcoming events! 

For the month of April, the Greenway Foundation is launching a fundraising campaign for our SPREE programs. SPREE brings thousands of children to the South Platte River every year to create unique experiences in our urban outdoor areas and teach environmentally focused topics. By utilizing nature as a teacher, we can create positive connections between children and natural spaces, experience new things outside (like holding crayfish), and have lots of fun while doing it!

However, in order to ensure that cost isn't a barrier and to make our programs more accessible to all we are asking help from our community this April! GivingSPREE is all about supporting SPREE programs so we can teach more and more children about the beautiful and important South Platte River! If you're interested in donating, check out these slides below that breakdown what your donation will do for SPREE programs as well as some gifts you'll receive from us for your generous donation! 

Unlisted above, donations of $350 can provide full scholarship to a child for a week at summer camp! If you'd like to donate, click the link here or check our website. The donation minimum is $5, but if you are unable to financially donate, look out for opportunities to volunteer with us! And let the givingSPREE commence!