Wild Bear: Ned’s Earth Day Headquarters: Young attendees were provided with a variety of activities and exhibits, as well as several arts and crafts stations throughout the nature center.  PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER KELLEY[/caption]

Saturday, April 22, 2023, was Earth Day, an annual global event designed to garner support for environmental protection issues and to educate and raise awareness about the importance of our planet’s ecological health. In Nederland, Wild Bear Nature Center (WBNC), located at 20 Lakeview Drive in the Caribou Village Shopping Center, is the official Earth Day headquarters.

From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. WBNC provided an afternoon full of entertaining and educational activities. They hosted several wildlife and conservation focused organizations, including national wildlife protection non-profit Defenders of Wildlife and Colorado State University Master Gardener Extension program. This provided young attendees and their parents with fun and engaging interactive exhibits.

The non-profit nature center offered the Earth Day events for free. However, the gift shop was open and donations were being accepted to help support WBNC and their mission to “inspire a lifelong connection to nature and community through creative exploration of the outdoors.”

Proceeds from WBNC events also go to funding the construction of their new 8,500 square foot facility on five acres of land located at Mud Lake, which would provide visitors to the center with access to 3,000 acres and 16 miles of trail within beautiful nature.

The new center would allow WBNC to host more exhibits and community programs, as well as provide more work space for volunteers and staff, more classrooms, an outdoor amphitheater, and an observation deck.

The Town of Nederland’s Sustainability Coordinator Leah Haney and Larry Tasaday of the Sustainability Advisory Board (SAB) were present with information regarding Nederland’s solar programs and promotions, and on the importance of composting. Haney and Tasaday also gave away seed packets and free light bulb kits from Xcel Energy.

Right Relationship Boulder was present with a table highlighting books about and by Indigenous people of Colorado. Right Relationship Boulder is a nonprofit organization of Indigenous and non-Native people who support, through social, educational, and political focused programs, Indigenous and Native people who live in the Boulder Valley today, and who educate about the Indigenous and Native peoples of Boulder Valley’s past.

Greenwood Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, based out of Lyons, is the largest rehabilitation center on the Front Range, rehabilitating and caring for thousands of orphaned, injured, or sick animals annually. Greenwood provided information on properly advocating for wildlife, and on wildlife tips for kids, which promotes safe interaction with wildlife and leaving no trace. Greenwood also provided hands-on samples of things often found in nature, including animal skulls, furs, and a variety of birds’ nests.

Local trio The Pineytop Players jammed through a selection of covers, crafting a breezy mood that floated lightly through WBNC, as children moved excitedly with their parents in tow from exhibit to exhibit, from arts and crafts to glass enclosures of hissing cockroaches.

Pauline Fraser of Nature’s Educators, who offer educational presentations on wildlife all over Colorado and neighboring states, wowed attendees with seven different animal ambassadors. The animals included a frilled lizard, cane toad, bark scorpion, gold knee tarantula, and a king snake. The stars of the show, however, were a beautiful Gyr-Saker Falcon named Lacey, and a surly and inquisitive Eurasian Eagle Owl named Slater.

Nature’s Educators were also accepting donations in the form of adoption certificates for both Lacey and Slayer and many other of their birds.

Earth Day began as a nationwide demonstration, or “teach-in,” in 1970 to raise awareness to environmental issues, and was organized by United States Senator Gaylord Nelson and activist Denis Hayes. The first Earth Day became one of the largest single-day protests in United States history, and has since become a movement celebrated around the world.

The Environmental Protection Agency was started as a result of the more than 20 million people who took the streets on April 22, 1970, for the first Earth Day. Over four decades later, the United States, along with over 120 other countries, signed the Paris Climate Accords on Earth Day in 2016.

For more information about WBNC and their new nature center to be constructed at Mud Lake, please visit: https:// wildbear.org.