River Watch Sampling on the South Platte River
April 26, 2025: Earth Day Bear Creek Greenbelt Native Tree and Shrub Planting
Our first conservation event of 2025 was held on the morning of Saturday, April 26th. This year the weather was excellent with almost 100 people attending the event hosted by Lakewood Parks at Bear Creek Greenbelt Park. CCTU again helped support the event with a generous donation to purchase the native trees and plants to be planted by the volunteers that morning. Community volunteers planted 17 native trees, 10 large shrubs and 830 forbs, rushes and grasses along Bear Creek and adjacent park lakes and riparian areas.
CCTU members planted rooted willow cuttings and collected/installed natural erosion control materials on two (2) streambank sections. Thirty-four rooted willow cutting bunches were planted along Bear Creek to eventually help stabilize 1,900 feet of eroding streambank.
CCTU would like to thank the Chapter members that came out on their Saturday morning to volunteer with the Lakewood community and for their hard work in Bear Creek to accomplish this project.
May 15, 2025: Lair o' the Bear Light Trail Maintenance
On May 15, 2025, CCTU members worked with volunteers from Jefferson County Open Space and Patagonia Denver to maintain the 1.6-mile Bruin Bluff Trail at Lair o’ the Bear Park adjacent to Bear Creek. Our trail work included maintaining and improving earthen water bars, runoff ditches and drains to help prevent soil erosion on this popular trail. Jefferson County Open Space personnel paired us up with experienced trail volunteers to help demonstrate the erosion control methods and tools as we progressed along the entire length of the trail.
Besides being a beautiful day to work outside to help protect Bear Creek, it was also an educational day learning about native flowering plants, various invasive plant species, recent beaver dam activity and last year’s volunteer work to effectively minimize the use of social trails down to Bear Creek.
A very big thanks to our CCTU volunteers that came out to support this conservation effort at Jefferson County’s Lair o’ the Bear Park.
