The Greenway Foundation - Blog

Animal Super Senses: Camp Recap

4/5/2021

Would you believe us if we told you that nature has superpowers? At SPREE’s Spring Break Camp, we learned all about the super senses of many Colorado animals- some animals in our state have superior sight, hearing or touch than us humans. This week we explored them all!

Our Newest Member!

3/8/2021

Just in time for the summer camp rush TGF has hired this year's seasonal environmental educator: Ali Witonsky, AKA Ali2. Ali joins the SPREE team as an educator to help lead summer camps, after school sessions, spring break camps, and much more.

SPring River Rangers Started!

3/5/2021

This week kicked off the Spring High School River Rangers teaching days by participating in our March SPREE After School! For the first week of March SPREE After School, two of our River Rangers, Tori & Hailey observed our SPREE educators as they taught the kiddos about animal shelters & practiced our observation skills.
Tori, a returning River Ranger and previous SPREE camper helped teach Hailey how to critter crawl.. leading to Hailey catching her FIRST crawdad ever!! BIG moment in the SPREE world! No one forgets their first crawdad catch.
We are so excited for the rest of our four River Rangers to participate in SPREE After School this month, and for many more big SPREE moments for both them and the kiddos!

March 2021 After School recap

3/4/2021

Week 4: SPring is here!

Our last day of After School was all about spring! We talked about all the signs of animals we have learned so far, like tracks, scat, and shelters. But with spring arriving, animals will be starting to emerge and become more active. Campers discussed what animals might hibernate or migrate during the winter and which animals may just adapt. But how do animals know when spring is arriving? Just like us, they notice the longer and warmer days, more water and food available, more activity in the parks, birds start flying more and plants start growing! Campers discovered other signs of animals like sounds, fur and feathers, scratches and chew marks, spider webs, and even more insects in and around the water!

After a chilly Critter Crawl, where the SPREE team, River Rangers Adele and Montze, and campers caught only one crawdad, we headed back to the classroom to warm up. Campers were able to make soap using the track molds from last week’s lesson as a graduation gift. Campers got to choose their favorite animal track to make their soap out of and they turned out so cute! After our graduation ceremony, we ended camp by playing a few rounds of Pictionary while we waited for parents. We had so much fun over the last month with our After School campers and can’t wait for Spring Break Camp next week!

Week 3: Whose track is that?

This week, our After School session fell on St. Patrick’s day, so to celebrate, we had campers make lucky rocks to hide around the park for others to find for good luck! Campers picked a rock and used a clover stamp made of recycled corks. After perfecting their “Sham-Rocks”, we walked through the park to hide our lucky rocks for other park goers to find for good luck.

After some St. Patrick’s day fun, campers learned all about animal tracks. Using their keen observation skills, campers expertly matched the tracks to the animals in no time. We discussed the
different things tracks can tell you, like the size of the animal, what it’s feet look like, and how it moves. Campers also got to see some animal track molds and test their identification skills.

Despite the cold weather and snow, the SPREE team, River Ranger Adele, and campers headed down to the river for a chilly evening Critter Crawl. The snow and wet mud made it super easy to find some animal tracks in the park on the way to Critter Crawl. We saw a lot of goose, duck, and canine tracks.

Unfortunately for campers (but good for Colorado!), the South Platte River was way too deep and flowing very fast from all of the snow melt. We headed back to the classroom for a snack and another craft. Campers were able to make their own animal track stamp so they could make their own tracks in the snow!

Week 2: Whose Scat is that?

Scat (the scientific word for poop) was the word of the day at our second day of our After School Series: Signs of Wildlife. This week, we switched it up a bit and started off with our favorite activity- Critter Crawl! River Rangers Alia and Lauren also joined SPREE teachers and campers this week for their very first Critter Crawl. We challenged the campers to beat their crawdad catch of 13 from last week. We may have only caught 8, but Ranger Alia caught her very first crawdad and one of them was carrying eggs! How many eggs do you think she was carrying?

Female crawdads can hold hundreds of eggs under her long swimmeretes, which are appendages adapted for swimming and carrying eggs. One of the first signs of spring, crawdad eggs will hatch in a few weeks and can take up to 4 months to reach adult size.

After all the excitement of Critter Crawl, we headed back to the classroom for even more fun activities. Campers learned about all different kinds of scat and what they can tell us about animals. Does the size of the scat tell us if the animal is big or small? What does the scat shape tell us about what they eat? As always, campers were on it and easily identified the animals and their scat.

Finally, campers learned about the difference between bird scat and a bird pellet. A pellet, often referred to as a casting, is a mass of undigested parts of a bird’s food, like bones and fur and is a way for birds of prey, like hawks and owls, to remove these from their digestive system. You can tell a lot about a bird’s diet by dissecting these pellets. And that is exactly what campers did!

Although some were hesitant at first, campers had a blast dissecting pellets and we discovered all kinds of bones, like teeth, jaws, leg bones, and even a full rodent skull! The SPREE team may have even had more fun than the campers!

Week 1: Holes, Burrows, & Nests, Oh My!

To kick off our first After School series of 2021, we learned about the needs of animals, such as food, water and shelter, and different types of shelters they may inhabit. SPREE teachers, including our newest educator, Ali, and River Rangers, Taylor and Hailey, had so much fun with our campers learning about and looking for signs of wildlife in Johnson-Habitat park!

Campers learned about all kinds of different shelters they may see in the park, like holes and burrows, bird and squirrel nests, beaver dams, insect shelters and more. Our campers are so smart that they were able to identify the resident animal of ALL of the shelters we showed them! They were even given a Nature Journal with an ID chart to help them identify shelters in the park or at home.

Of course, campers were so excited about our must-do activity: Critter Crawl! SPREE teachers, River Rangers, and campers found so many macroinvertebrates, or animals without a spine that we can see with our eyes, while exploring the River. We caught 13 crawdads, our favorite macroinvertebrate, and our River Ranger Hailey even caught her very first crawdad! The campers also learned about where crawdads like to make shelter: under rocks and hiding in river debris

We also found a few leeches, sowbugs, and native snails, as well as the invasive New Zealand Mud Snail. Campers not only learned about this invasive species and how it got here but were also able to see how tiny they are in person.
After an exciting Critter Crawl, we headed back to the classroom for some free time, where campers could work in their journal, make their own animal shelter out of natural materials, create a craft, or go to the playground. We all had a blast at our first in-person program of the year!

A Conversation with Miss Sandy

2/19/2021

To celebrate Black History Month, TGF is highlighting some of the inspiring black leaders in the Denver community, striving to make lasting change within environmental education, conservation, and beyond. When researching for this project, I came across Sandra Douglas, referenced by many who have worked with her as Miss Sandy. As the Community Connector for the Cole Neighborhood, SPREE has worked with her in the past to make outdoor education accessible to this community. When I had the pleasure of speaking with Miss Sandy about her work, I could hear the sounds of a busy kitchen in the background. Sure enough, she told me “Sorry honey, I’m busy cooking up a hundred pounds of potatoes”. At that point, I knew I was talking to someone who cared deeply about this community and that I could not tell her story better than she could. Keep reading to learn more of Miss Sandy’s story, in her words.

I have lived in the Denver area, specifically the Cole neighborhood for 35 years. I love it. I love the neighbors and almost everything about it. With a Master’s Degree in nonprofit management, at Regis University, working at the neighborhood level is a natural fit and a joy. From nonprofit organizations, my church, volunteering, walking the neighborhood streets - engaging residents is my love – one of service.

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.

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.