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Adorbs baby owlets . . . do we have your attention now?

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Wednesday, October. 23, 2024

Categories: Local News, Colorado Sun

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This week we are putting up a fight against dire warnings of “existential” threats.

In politics, in the environment, in speculation about plot changes for “Dune 3.” Yes, these things are all terribly important, and we don’t want you to ignore them. But we wanted to offer a brief moment to breathe, welcome the arrival of baby burrowing owls, and realize that when some circumstances are labeled by pessimists as “irreversible,” others respond with the words “good challenge.”

Take this lone determined salmon, below, undulating upstream this week in the clear waters of a Klamath River tributary in the Pacific Northwest. A salmon hasn’t passed this point of the river in more than 100 years, according to the Yurok Tribe. Towering hydroelectric dams blocked the way, and contributed to worrisome — existential — declines of a key species.

But they finally managed to take out the Iron Gate Dam near the Oregon-California border, and the fish are already heading back. They can now spawn in much larger stretches of the Klamath, in territory once thought to be a human-caused lockout.

So let’s go through this sunny autumn day imagining the reversing of the irreversible. We’d rather be optimists proven wrong than pessimists proven right.

On to the news, together.

Maturing burrowing owls hatched on city of Boulder open space this spring learn their way around the prairie dog holes that provide their burrows on Gunbarrel Hill. (City of Boulder Open Space)

Are we starting with this item in order to lure you into climate and environment news with pictures of baby owls? Of course we are, and if you find that to be pandering, feel free to return to doomscrolling election news at Politico or The New York Times.

We here at the Temperature Desk need more wildlife pics.

And, as always, we promise to toss in some learning. We were not aware that the city of Boulder’s prairie dog towns are regular hosts to newborn burrowing owls, which are on Colorado’s state threatened species list. Boulder keeps a lookout on prairie dog holes each spring for telltale signs of owlet faces peering out with their trademark yellow eyes and unusual-for-owls daytime feeding habits.

After consistent years of successful burrowing owl launches, Boulder wildlife experts hadn’t seen any this year. Then they turned up in an awkward spot: Workers putting the final vegetation touches on a new stretch of the Vesper Trail at Gunbarrel Hill saw owlets just off the unopened trail. Biologists went to scope out the owlets, and found another burrowing pair with more owlets a little further off the trail. Two pairs along the trail were great news.

Plans for a summer grand opening for Vesper Trail screech-owled to a halt. Boulder is a good place to ask for wildlife-friendly patience from eager hikers, city ecologist Victoria “Tory” Poulton said.

Hold those dogs, too, Boulder said.

“Dogs even on a leash can be a real hazard to owls and especially the young, when they’re still learning to fly, and detect and get away from threats,” Poulton said.

Open space officials put off the trail opening from early June to just now, and the delay helped the owl parents successfully fledge eight young from their underground abodes.

The day-hunting burrowers are migratory, so this is the time of year the young ones join their parents on flights to Texas or Mexico, Poulton said. In spring, they tend to look for new space close to where they were hatched.

“So if we’re lucky, we’ll have some of those come back,” she said. “And then our expectation for next year, with the trail open, is that they will decide to not nest right there but move to other parts of the property, where there’s a bigger block of habitat away from disturbance.”

Sandbox Solar installer Dylan Suess, 25, left, and crew lead Wyatt Reynolds, 26, right, both of Fort Collins, secure a 420-watt photovoltaic panel on a residential roof in Golden on August 22, 2024, in Jefferson County. (Andy Colwell, Special to The Colorado Sun)

$5,750

Rebate Xcel offered homeowners for installing a Tesla Powerwall

What if Xcel Energy offered a rebate and everyone came?

That’s what has happened to the utility’s Battery Connect program. So many households and businesses have installed batteries and filed for rebates that the program has overshot its Colorado Public Utilities Commission approved budget and has shut down, Mark Jaffe reports.

“Due to the popularity of the program, it is being paused due to a forecast that shows the number and costs of applications currently under consideration exceeds the Commission approved budget,” the company said in a statement.

Xcel Energy was offering up to a $5,750 rebate to homeowners installing a Tesla Powerwall 3, which costs about $8,500 plus installation — provided the utility could draw on the battery during peak demand periods.

“We are working with stakeholders and customers to consider budgetary solutions, which ultimately will require Commission approval,” the company said

It has been a tough year for residential solar installers due to high interest rates, but installing batteries has been a bright spot. “We are selling a lot of batteries in the Xcel market north of Denver because Xcel has such huge battery incentives,” Ian Skor, owner for Fort Collins-based Sandbox Solar, told The Sun.

This comes on the heels of Xcel Energy shutting down its commercial energy efficiency program because it burned through its budget. The program restarted in October after the PUC allowed the utility to move $34 million from next year’s energy efficiency budget to finish out this year.

The proposed redesign of Arvada’s Gold Strike Park. (City of Arvada documents)

Two historic but neglected and rundown city parks, one in the heart of Denver and the other on Arvada’s eastern edge, just got a multimillion-dollar shot of hope from the National Park Service.

The NPS, better known for ranger hats and stewardship at wilderness gems like Rocky Mountain National Park, also has a fund for renovating city parks with a great story to tell. Denver is getting $8.4 million in a matching grant to open up and activate La Alma Lincoln Park at 13th and Osage, one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city and the seat of Hispanic activism in the 1970s.

Arvada, meanwhile, was awarded $7.3 million that it will match to bring back eroded and weedy Gold Strike Park, the location of the first gold discovery in Colorado at the confluence of Ralston and Clear creeks.

The NPS Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership award means “Gold Strike Park will be a vital addition to Arvada’s park system, especially for the east side of the city, where many recreational facilities are aging,” Arvada senior landscape architect Maki Boyle said. “It will feature nature-based play elements and provide outdoor access for historically underserved and low-income communities. This project addresses a long-standing need, as the park has remained underutilized for over 20 years.”

Denver is equally ecstatic, hoping the money will speed up revival of La Alma Lincoln Park as a modernized recreation and exercise hub in a neighborhood underserved by open space. Neighbors want to use the park more than they do, but criminal activity has risen, with too many places to hide behind the rec center and a heavily treed area with bad lighting, said Denver Parks and Recreation director of park planning and design Gordon Robertson.

“Our operations teams lately have been dealing with a surge of (negative) activity in this park, but we definitely are excited about this new vision and this new design and construction project to really bring back life to the park,” Robertson said.

The new La Alma Lincoln Park design, including an expanded skate park and walking-lap trail, centers on input from literally thousands of surveyed residents, Robertson said.

“That’s the beauty of talking to so many people: statistics don’t lie,” he said. “The really great ideas rose to the top, and were well supported by the people that responded.”

In Denver, the design phase begins now through 2025, and construction could begin in 2026, with a potential grand opening in late 2027. The matching money will come from the dedicated park acquisition and development sales tax Denver residents approved in 2018, Robertson said. Arvada’s Gold Strike overhaul has a final design and is ready for construction, Boyle said.

Read more about the two-pack parks plan later this week at ColoradoSun.com.

Monthly average global temperatures keep rising. (Source: NASA/Peter Jacobs/Katy Mersmann)

At least it rained once in the past month.

While the Front Range summer extends into late October under glorious but largely bone-dry skies, you have to wonder how the global temperature averages are doing.

Not great.

NASA recently updated their monthly historic temperature comparisons, and the latest results are shown above. The global data shows 2023 averages in red, and 2024 is in purple. The white lines show monthly temperatures from the years 1961 to 2022.

June, July, and August 2024 combined were about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit (about 0.1 degrees Celsius) warmer globally than any other summer in NASA’s record — narrowly topping the record set in 2023.

That’s it, thanks so much for hanging with us. Dress up for Halloween as a brave salmon or a curious owlet, and go forth in search of hope and candy. If you get anything good, we’ll take a 100 Grand bar, thanks.

— Michael & John