(lively music) - [Narrator] Throughout the country, people are planting seeds of innovation, harvesting a bounty of ideas to help care for the only home we have, planet Earth.

The core of sustainability is meeting the needs of today's society without compromising the world for future generations.

With billions of people on earth and climate change a reality, it's more important than ever to open our eyes and minds to alternative ideas, both new and old, about food production, renewable energy, a circular economy, and more.

This series explores eco-friendly ideas and lifestyles that help to make our world a little bit better.

Welcome to "My World Too", short stories of sustainable living and earthly innovations.

(gentle piano music) In Lawrence, Kansas, there is a 100-acre nature preserve that incorporates and celebrates wetlands, woodlands, and prairie habitats.

Whitney Manney visits the Prairie Park Nature Center to see a wide variety of native Kansas wildlife, and to find out more about their educational mission.

- Hey, Dara, so nice to meet you.

- It was nice to meet you.

- So tell me where I'm at right now.

- You are at Prairie Park Nature Center in Southeast Lawrence, Kansas.

- This is very cool.

So from what I can tell, this is a space for conservation, this is a space for education.

Can you tell me a little bit about the Nature Center's mission?

- Yeah.

Our goal is to help preserve the natural world by teaching environmental education.

We keep it hands-on as much as possible, and just using ambassador animals to kind of help.

- [Whitney] How involved is the community in you all's mission?

- They're very involved.

They come out all the time and take a look at the nature center, learn about things out in our ecosystems, in our wetland, our woodland, our prairie, and they come in here and ask questions about the animals they've seen.

- I'm looking around.

On the inside, there is a lot of different things happening right now.

Can you tell me a little bit about what happens just day-to-day inside of the learning center?

- Day-to-day.

So we start off the day feeding the animals.

The public likes to come and watch that, kind of learn about what all the animals eat, learn about the herbivores, the omnivores and carnivores that they can find out in the wild.

And then they, there's programs going on.

We have preschool programs, we have programs for homeschool, we have afterschool programs, and then we have adult programs in the evening quite often.

- [Whitney] Is the community able to get involved as far as like helping with the animals at all?

- Yes, we do take volunteers.

So they can help them feed the animals.

- I heard that you all have a land stewardship program as well.

Can you talk to me about that?

- Yeah.

This fall, we're having the public coming out, helping maintain our prairie.

We burn it once a year, and then, in the spring and fall, we have to cut back some of the invasive species.

And the community comes out.

They get involved, and they help remove some of that for us.

- [Whitney] How many acres of land do you all have?

It's quite expansive out there.

- [Dara] So we started with 70 acres in '99, and we've expanded to a hundred acres.

- Wow.

Okay.

This space started out as a classroom, from what I heard, when the space originally started.

What made you all convert this into what it is now?

- So, at the beginning, it was meant to just be a classroom space.

And over time, the animals kind of came in, because we've learned animals help people connect with nature.

If they can see the animal up close, then they seem to be, find it more relatable out in the wild.

More awe-inspiring, I guess.

- Are all of the species that are in the center, are they native to Kansas?

- Majority of the animals in here are native.

There are a few exotics that come in helpful for teaching some of our programs, like endangered species, but the majority are native.

- Okay, so now for the biggest question of the day.

Can we meet some of the animals?

- Yes.

Let me show you my favorite native animal we have here at the nature center.

- Alright, let's go.

- So, Whitney, this is Rachel, our naturalist here.

- Nice to meet you.

- Hi, Rachel.

- Hi.

- And this is Phoebe, our Virginia opossum.

- Okay.

Hey, Phoebe girl.

(laughing) - Say hello, Phoebe.

She's very friendly.

- So, possums are native to Kansas?

- They are, yes.

They're native to Kansas and they're found throughout much of North America, including Canada, the US, and Mexico.

And they can be found in a lot of different ecosystems.

They're actually very adaptable animals, so they're found in our woodlands, our prairies, our wetlands.

But they're also very well habituated to life in urban areas.

- Okay, 'cause I have been taught, you see a possum, go the opposite way.

But I see you are holding Phoebe.

Phoebe is very comfortable.

- She is.

Yeah, a lot of people do fear possums.

They're kind of seen as dirty, vermin, but they're actually really misunderstood animals.

A lot of people think that they carry rabies really commonly, but it's actually pretty rare for a possum to carry rabies.

Not that you should just go up and grab one.

You shouldn't do that with any wildlife.

But yeah, they're very misunderstood, and they're actually really important parts of the ecosystem.

The possum and other animals that we call scavengers are kind of like nature's cleanup crew.

So they eat all the rotting, decaying things in nature.

If we didn't have them, there'd just be like a bunch of corpses piling up.

So they basically recycle nutrients back into the ecosystem.

- So I'm just curious, is there a difference between a possum like Phoebe, who has been in the wild and living in more of like a rural kind of environment, versus like city possums?

- So they are the same species, but possums that live in the city are definitely gonna be more comfortable with humans and human environments.

They're gonna be more comfortable coming up to people, digging through their trash and things like that.

- Now, is Phoebe a big, like, popular?

- She is very popular, yes.

So we do lots of educational programs here at the nature center, and Phoebe is one of our most popular education ambassadors.

The kids absolutely love her.

We do allow them to pet her, but we don't usually let kids hold her.

She can be a little bit bitey.

She's actually got 50 teeth in that mouth of hers, so it's the most of any mammal in North America, actually.

- Okay.

That's good to know.

So we wanna avoid their mouths, but possums are our friends, and they're very important.

- [Rachel] They're are our friends and they are extremely important, yes.

- So is there anything that the community can do to help cultivate safe space for possums, 'cause they are important.

- Yeah.

Really, I think habitat conservation is the most important thing for helping possums and a lot of other scavengers and wildlife in general.

These animals need healthy ecosystems to live in and thrive, so we've gotta have preserves, like here at the Prairie Park Nature Center, for those animals to live.

- So why is it important for us to be looking out for these animals and these ecosystems?

- Our ecosystems provide so many important services for us as a community and as a human species.

So ecosystems are not only important habitats for wildlife, but they provide spaces for people to recreate in.

It's so important to be in green spaces to have good mental health.

There's spaces for us to exercise in, but the wildlife specifically as well perform a lot of functions that are really important.

We've got pollinators, right, that are helping us grow crops.

Lots of animals help to keep the air and water clean.

There's lots of really important functions that our wildlife provide for us.

- So they're not just important in the prairies and in the fields, They're also important in our neighborhoods and in our urban areas.

- Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Possums are actually really great pest-control.

They eat things like spiders and insects that people, you know, don't necessarily always like around.

So they are really helpful to us.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

(light guitar music) - Are there any endangered species that are native to Kansas?

'Cause when I think about endangered species, I think of like incredibly exotic animals.

But are there species that are native to Kansas that you all are working to conserve and educate the public about?

- That's a great question, 'cause a lot of people don't think about how there might be endangered species in their own backyard.

There's endangered insects and reptiles in Kansas, mammals and endangered birds.

- So I would imagine that there's a big difference between zoo and nature centers, in the sense that a lot of these species that you all feature are native to the land.

Why is that important?

- Because we want people to understand what they see out there.

Part of our jobs is to be nature interpretive.

So when they go out, they know what they're seeing, and they kind of understand it a little better than just by coming up to it.

- So from an education standpoint, would you say that that helps when you're talking to kids, or even some of the adults?

Like, they're able to kind of put two and two together, like, "Okay, I might actually see this outside when I'm taking a walk in my neighborhood," or something like that.

- Yeah.

And the goal is to overall inspire them, be awe-strucken and by it, and wanna learn more about it.

- Can you gimme an overview of the nature center?

What's happening inside and outside?

'Cause you all take up a lot of space.

- Yeah.

The nature center is an education facility that sits on a hundred-acre preserve, with a woodland, a wetland and a prairie.

And in the building, we have all sorts of groups of people coming in, all different ages, checking out our animals, learning about the native animals they can find out in those three ecosystems.

And then we have a lot of programs going on throughout the day.

We really want to get hands-on, go out in those ecosystems and see what is out there.

(gentle piano music) - So this is our native tall grass prairie, which is an ecosystem that once dominated most of Kansas.

But due to agricultural development, residential development, we actually have less than about three or 4% of the prairies we used to have.

They're incredibly important for wildlife, 'cause they're extremely biodiverse, meaning there's lots of different animals and plants that call this prairie home.

They're also really important for carbon capture.

So they actually help regulate the climate by capturing carbon from the atmosphere when they photosynthesize.

They basically take in that carbon dioxide so that it's not out in the air, and they release oxygen, so they're really important.

(gentle piano music continuing) Welcome to our woodland habitat.

- [Whitney] Okay.

Very nice.

A big change from where we just were- - Absolutely.

- in the prairie.

Can you tell me, are there any kind of species of plant or tree out here- - Yeah, absolutely.

- that are native?

- Our main trees that we have here in our woodland are our oak, hickory, and walnut.

And they help make up what we call our temperate deciduous woodland.

Deciduous meaning that the leaves fall here every year in the autumn.

And so we love to use this area as an outdoor classroom, teaching kids about seasonal changes.

We also use the forest for lots of different programs, like foraging classes, teaching people how to sustainably harvest mushrooms in a way that doesn't deplete that natural resource.

We teach kids about how to identify tracks and scat, to figure out what wildlife we're living out here.

Lots of fun stuff.

- So with any of the animals that live in the learning center, would this be their natural habitat?

- Absolutely.

Our possum, Phoebe, would love to spend time in these woodlands, climbing the trees.

Really, there's different wildlife that live in each layer of the forest.

So on the forest floor, you're gonna find things like millipedes, toads.

Up in kind of the middle section, the understory, you might find things like tree frogs.

In the canopy, you're gonna find tons of different birds, like owls, nesting.

There's a lot of wildlife out here in our forest.

(gentle piano music continuing) Alright, so here is Mary's Lake, our major wetland habitat that we've got here on the preserve.

- Nice.

It's very peaceful down here.

- It is very peaceful.

Lots of people love to spend time here fishing.

The Department of Wildlife actually stocks the pond with things like crappie, blue gill, large mouth bass, channel catfish.

So lots of people, as long as they have a fishing license, love to come and spend their afternoons fishing on our lake.

- So this is a very nice like opportunity for the community to come.

- Absolutely.

- [Whitney] You know, plug in with you all as a nature center, but also like have some time to theirselves as well.

- Totally.

- It's very nice.

- [Rachel] Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, they can interact with us through our own canoeing and fishing classes that we have on the lake, or they can come just do it on their own.

- So which species from the nature center would make this area their habitat?

- [Rachel] Yeah, great question.

You'll find lots of different amphibians out here.

Like our largest amphibian, the American bullfrog, leopard frogs.

You'll find a variety of turtle species, like painted turtles, red-eared sliders, as well as different water fowl would be out here.

So yeah, there's gonna be a lot of different animals out here for people to see.

- [Whitney] Rachel, thank you so much for taking me on the outdoor tour.

- We hope this inspires people to check out their community nature centers and get inspired with local conservation initiatives to help protect our planet.

- With our goal, trying to inspire conserving the natural world, we use our ambassador animals to help inspire that to help.

When they connect with our red tail hawk, then they know how important the prairie is so the red tail can find its food, the rats, the mice, the snakes it eats, and how that's all connected.

And it's important to protect that ecosystem, to protect that animal.

- Is a nature park like this unique to Lawrence, Kansas, or are there other nature parks across the country?

- [Dara] You can find nature centers nationwide.

Check out your Parks and Recs Department or your Parks and Tourism Department to find out more.

- So when you all have guests coming through and you are giving them the full rundown of what's going on right here in their backyard, are there certain things that you tell them, that you educate them about, that they can do at home to kind of look out for these native species?

- Oh yeah, we're always trying to promote them to be nature's investigators.

We tell them what to look for.

When you see an animal, take a look at its coloration, its adaptations, what kind of habitat do you think it came from by looking at its body shape, what kind of wildlife they like to see, what can they incorporate in their backyard to bring the wildlife into it, to make their backyard a habitat.

(gentle piano music) (gentle guitar music) - When you look at the population of this planet, over 8 billion people, about 10% of them have no access to a power grid.

About 43% of the people are on a grid that's unreliable.

Is there a problem greater than access to power and energy?

I mean, no economy can survive without access to, not today.

We take it for granted in this country, because we have a very reliable grid, but there are people that have no access.

Our first target here was targeting support for critical assets that are located off the power grid.

(gentle guitar music continuing) - [Narrator] In the past, when someone needed off-grid power, they would install a diesel generator.

But generators rely on fossil fuels and emit hydrocarbons.

HCI Energy is working on a clean, reliable, and renewable solution to this problem.

Nick Schmitz learns more about how these sustainable systems can be used in remote areas.

- Kurt, thank you so much for taking the time.

Can you tell me what is HCI Energy, and what is it that you do?

- Well, HCI Energy provides smart renewable power for off-grid locations that essentially enable communities to have communication and connectivity that they wouldn't otherwise have.

- How is it that you do that?

I'm seeing this thing behind us.

- Yep.

- It looks like a big box.

What's going on in this big box?

- So the big box is about eight feet by 10 feet, and it is configurable to different customer requirements.

But a typical installation has solar energy, wind energy, and then batteries.

And so the solar then provides power for, or during in the day, and then the battery system would provide backup during the night.

And then there's also a generator that runs during rainy nights, or storm season, and gets us through those difficult periods.

- Past solutions to this problem would've been a big giant diesel generator that you would've had to constantly be filling up with diesel, moving parts that are breaking down.

- But there's one of two possible solutions.

One is that they would put a diesel generator, a propane generator running 24/7.

The other solution is nothing, right?

Many times, telecom companies will just skip a location because it's too hard to bring them power, and they'll just say, "We'll leave that as a skip hole, 'cause we don't have to have a hundred percent coverage."

So that works for Telecom, but it doesn't work for public safety, and it doesn't work for remote communities, things like that.

So we not only were able to provide a solution that's more fuel-efficient, or renewable, when and where it's needed, but in many cases, we're providing connection and connectivity where there wasn't one before.

- So when you look at the technology involved in HCI, millions of cellphone towers throughout the world, hundreds of thousands of them are not on a power grid.

They're being serviced today by a diesel generator.

Why not have a greener solution?

Now, the interesting part about this solution, it is not the scary kind of solution that you typically find in small companies, where it's a new technology and nobody understands, and there's a real risk that it might not work.

There's nothing new about wind, there's nothing new about solar panels, there's nothing new about batteries or generators.

The secret sauce here is the integration of those resources to provide a greener solution that's also lower cost overall.

(light music) - So, Kurt, I see that there is a generator in the system.

Can you talk to me about how, how that generator is used and how often it's used?

- Yeah.

So the primary power source in most of our applications is solar.

So solar provides energy during the day, and then charges the batteries, and we utilize then the batteries through the night.

The generator's there for storm season, rainy days, et cetera, it's a backup for the system.

Sometimes the generator is diesel and sometimes the generator is propane, depending on what's the fuel that's most available in that location.

But when we run the generator, we run it in a hybrid mode, similar to a Prius or a hybrid car, and so the fuel efficiency is much, much better.

(light music continuing) - So, Heather, what are we looking at here?

- You are looking at one of our hybrid power shelters.

This one's actually really in the final testing phase, about to be ready to go out the door.

- Okay.

And when it's tested and ready to go, how does it get from here to way up in Alaska?

- So it can go a multitude of ways.

The great news is it's super portable by its nature.

So it can be put on a barge, it can be put on a truck, it can be helicoptered in, so it can go to very rugged, very remote areas, high mountaintops, cold temperatures, you name it.

It's actually built to be super portable.

- And how does it work?

- Let's step inside.

I'll show you.

The key thing about this is really what we call our ZPM, or zero glitch power module.

It's an uninterrupted power supply, but a modern version of it.

It takes multiple inputs and multiple outputs, and actually displays them here on the screen.

The really key differentiator about this is not only the multiple inputs and outputs, but that it optimizes renewables.

The goal of the system is to use power from the wind or solar, storing it in the batteries to run whatever you need, communications, power for water, whatever it might be servicing.

And essentially, the generator, which is actually housed here, is the last resort.

It wants to use all of the renewable energy first.

- Okay.

So this is, this is the brain, what differentiates this from, say, a diesel generator.

This is monitoring to ensure that that's the last resort.

- Absolutely.

- That we're using that generator when we absolutely need to.

The rest of it's coming from the solar panels or the wind.

(gentle piano music) So, Kurt, it sounds to me like these are a real game-changer.

Can you tell us about some case studies, some places where these systems have been deployed, and the success?

- Well, one of our favorite success stories is in the village of Unalakleet, up in northern, northwest Alaska.

The units left the factory in May of last year, and by September they were deployed and providing communication for their internet and their emergency land radio.

And in mid-September, typhoon Merbok came in and flooded the village at 11 feet above high tide level, so a lot of the homes lost power.

Our shelter, which provided all of the power for the emergency communication system, did not.

We stayed rock solid, and so we allowed them to have their police and connection with the outside world through the whole emergency.

Another project that we're really excited about is the Highway of Tears, and this is a cooperative between the Canadian Telecom Company and the government to provide telecom communications between Prince Rupert, on the Pacific Ocean, and Prince George.

And it's about an eight-hour drive on this highway.

The Highway of Tears is a sad story for British Columbia, where they've lost over 80 indigenous women over the past 50 years, and they're providing then telecommunication links throughout the whole length of it.

Many of those locations are very remote, and we're providing power at the point of use.

(gentle music) - So, Kurt, these are the finished product.

This is what a customer gets delivered to them?

- Yeah, there's three different shelters here, and these are going to the Highway of Tears project.

This module is the, the power side.

And then they're paired up, and over there is the the telecommunication side.

And they'll be lifted in by helicopter to these three different locations that are in the remote side of the Highway of Tears.

And to get there, they'll ship from Kansas City off to Seattle, get on a barge, and they'll go up to Prince Rupert, and then truck to a staging site, and then the last mile will be lifted by helicopter.

In fact, that was one of our design requirements.

We had to stay underneath the helicopter lift weight to get them up to the mountaintop locations.

- So these these products are portable.

You can put them pretty much anywhere in any sort of terrain in the world?

- Yeah.

Well, that's one of their advantages, is they're turnkey.

And you can drop it inside, and then, within a week, we could commission, and they are up and operational with both power and telecommunications.

And the nice thing is that it's ready, we just put it in place.

Previously, they would design site-specific things and they would fly technicians in and out and try to ship all the equipment.

Huge logistics nightmare.

But instead, we're ready and easy to deploy.

(gentle piano music) - Why is it so important that we invest more in sustainable solutions?

- If you're watching the news today, you can understand that sustainable solutions must be a part of our future.

When you look at the way we are supplying energy today, there's a limit to the amount of coal that we have, coal deposits, there's a limit to the amount of oil that we will have for our kids and our grandkids.

So we have to find other ways to provide that solution.

And you know that the solutions we have today, they're very difficult on the environment.

So we have to all work on finding solutions that are more sustainable over time, that will also have a lower impact on the environment.

(gentle piano music) - Kurt, what kind of impact do these hybrid power solutions have on the communities that they serve?

- For people who have not had communication or internet in the past, it's a huge impact, right?

We're reaching people that haven't been reached before, and it's a game-changer and it's a life-changer for them and their families.

It's communication connection, it's internet service, it's connection to health and specialty doctors that are remote.

And we're reaching people that we haven't reached before, that have kind of been at the margins of society.

Those are he people in really remote locations, tribal communities which are off the power grid.

And in the future, distant communities in the developing nations that need that connection and power to make that happen.

So we're really, it's back to this theme of my world too, right, where we're all connected and helping each other provide that, that sharing of information and sharing of connection.

- So, Leo, what does the future hold for companies like HCI and for this space in general?

- Well, I believe the future is very bright, of course, otherwise we would not have invested.

But, and we believe this solution is the right one for this time.

You know, here's the issue, though.

When you invest in a solution like this, you have to be patient.

And I can tell you, from the years I've spent in telecommunications and the power industry, that the assets that we are trying to serve today have a solution today.

It's just not a sustainable solution.

But I can also tell you that the people who are responsible for maintaining those assets and making sure they have a sufficient power, are people who don't get paid for taking risk, so they are very slow to adopt new approaches.

So we have to be very patient, but we know that this is a solution that cannot be overlooked.

It is important, not just for those critical assets off the grid, but those communities that need access to power, and they are all over this planet.

(lively music) (lively music continuing) (lively music continuing) - [Narrator] Share your sustainability story or learn more about sustainability and earth-friendly innovations at MyWorldToo.com.

(ethereal music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music)