The Greenway Foundation - Blog

Nautilus Pilot Results

11/25/2020

In the past 10 months, the Nautilus has been passively collecting trash along the north side of the Cherry Creek between Blake Street and Market Street. The Water Connection (TWC) is excited to share some trash stats for what has been collected!

Nautilus passively collected trash and debris in the Cherry Creek.

Captured debris after a maintenance visit in May 2020.

What is listed above (and more!) was collected in 32 site visits spaced over10 months! Nautilus was serviced regularly by Mile High Flood District and ArborForce-- thank you for being such integral partners during this pilot process and for collecting valuable information regarding the device’s function and what types of debris were caught! Other partners for this pilot include ClayDean Electric, who built this version of Nautilus, as well as Denver Parks and Recreation and Naranjo Civil Constructors.

Plans for Nautilus 2 are being explored, so check back in early 2021 for more information!

To learn more about this project, visit the Nautilus page. You can also reach out to the Director of The Water Connection, Devon Buckels at devon@thewaterconnection.org

Recap: Under the Ice School Break camp

11/24/2020

<-- That was the mission left by Chompers, our Special Agent beaver of SPREE. He leaves us missions every day of camp to let campers and teachers learn about what the days’ lessons will be about. Well, Chompers wasn’t wrong. The morning sure was chilly! Luckily for us it didn’t take long for the sun to peak out and begin to warm up our park, River, and kiddos!

Recap: SPREE After School

11/20/2020

SPREE teachers had such a great time the last 4 Wednesday afternoons for SPREE After School! We learned a lot together with our students through our many experiments, crafts, and critter crawls!
Our first week, which was the last week of October, had a spooky atmosphere. We went down to critter crawl where we pulled out many critters with eerie lifestyles. Crawdads, which are one of our favorite river dwellers, are actually scavengers. That means they eat dead things! We caught probably 10-15 crawdads together this day! We also learned about the unhinged jaws of dragonfly larvae, and the tearing mouth parts of mayfly larvae!

After critter crawl, we had an engineering craft to help us thaw out. We made spider launchers! First we made spiders from pipe cleaners, and then using rubber bands and recycled materials, we constructed a web-like launcher. SPREE teachers were impressed because all our students’ launchers worked better than teachers!

Tori the Trout Queen (aka Trout in the Classroom Intern)

11/6/2020

Trout in the Classroom is a program run by Trout Unlimited. In a normal year, fish eggs are shipped to different classrooms, in which tanks are set up and students learn by hatching and growing the fish. The fish are then released into waterways when they are almost done growing. This is an education program, not really a stocking program, as the quantity of fish that are released is fairly low overall.
This year, Denver Trout Unlimited (DTU) and The Greenway Foundation (TGF) have partnered together to establish an internship for a high school student so the elementary school classes can still have access to the learning experience without having the restriction of needing to be in the classroom every day, which is hard to guarantee with the realities of Covid.

New Invasive: New Zealand Mudsnail

10/26/2020

Bad news bears, Denverites. We have a new invasive in town. The New Zealand Mudsnail (Potamopyrgus antipodarum) has been spotted in a few places along the South Platte River now. It hasn't spread everywhere yet, so learn more below about this harmful critter and what you can do to make sure we don't let it spread any further.

What is it?
The New Zealand mudsnail is a tiny aquatic snail that inhabits lakes, rivers, streams, reservoirs and estuaries. In addition to mud, the snail can also be found lurking on rock or gravel surfaces, aquatic vegetation, or woody debris. New Zealand mudsnail are highly adaptable to diverse climates and can tolerate a broad range of aquatic conditions such as temperature, salinity, turbidity, water velocity, and stream productivity. In the United States, New Zealand mudsnail populations are comprised almost entirely of self‐cloning parthenogenetic females (no need for fertilization here). The brood size of an individual female ranges from 20‐120 embryos, each of which may mature to produce an average of 230 offspring per year – these gals could show Dolly the sheep a thing or two!

FACT: A single female mudsnail can result in a colony of 40 million snails in one year.

Wild Weasels School Break Recap

10/19/2020

What is a mustelid? What makes this carnivorous mammal unique from other mammals? That is exactly what we sought out to solve during Wild Weasels School Break Camp.

Fall Frezy: School Break Recap

10/19/2020

It sure felt like a fall morning as campers arrived- one camper clocked the temperature at 27 degrees Fahrenheit! This set the scene perfectly for the day’s theme: Fall Frenzy.

Family Fishing Fun

10/14/2020

SPREE met up with local families at Overland Pond Park for a fun-filled Family Fishing Day. We had a smaller group than normal to keep the event safe for all of our participants and partners, and we had a fantastic time with all of our community members that attended.

FAll family south platte stewardship day

10/5/2020

We recently hosted our 2020 fall family stewardship day at Centennial Gardens, and saying we were inspired by our participating families is an understatement! They were so eager to clean up their city, that we could have kept going for hours!

We started our morning by picking up trash throughout Centennial Gardens, and slowly made our way outside of the Gardens along the South Platte River. It took extra sharp eyes to spot a lot of the litter along the river, as it was mostly small pieces of trash.
Although it didn’t feel like we were filling our garbage bags as quickly, we were still making a HUGE impact on our River! Smaller pieces of trash can be even more harmful to our aquatic ecosystems because they are harder to see and retrieve once in the water, and aquatic animals can mistake them for food.
But don't worry! Good thing we had smaller eyes with us to spot that smaller trash! Our SPREE families spread out and conquered the Trash Monster one piece at a time!

We ended up finishing our day with three FULL garbage bags of litter that would have eventually made its way into our South Platte River and on. To reward our SPREE families for their great work, they each left with a bag of outdoor and at-home crafts/activities, plus some extra SPREE goodies :) We want to thank everyone who attended and helped us work toward a cleaner city, and thus a happier river!

YES Conference But Make It Virtual

10/5/2020

The Youth Exploring Stewardship (YES) Coalition is a group of more than 15 organizations who are located in or working along Colorado’s Front Range and who engage youth in environmental stewardship. While such a network has long existed for stewardship organizations statewide, youth organizations have been largely compartmentalized or participating in small-scale collaboration. The YES Coalition was initiated in the spring of 2017 by Wildlands Restoration Volunteers to bridge that gap with the intent of establishing best practices, determining opportunities for partnership, and maximizing our impact through collaboration.

The third annual YES Conference was slated for this October. Of course, due to the realities of the current pandemic, organization partners and our youth board had to get creative when planning this year's conference. What they created was a seamless blend of small, in-person, outside activities, and virtual workshops.