Sustaining us is made possible by Fire Heart Pictures, And viewers like you.

Thank you.

Helen, thanks for joining us for sustaining us here on KLCS PBS.

I'm David Nazar.

Sustaining a good life can be challenging, to say the least, here in the U.S. for folks with disabilities.

That's just a fact.

There are massive issues and obstacles with our health care system, with finding a good doctor, with our health insurance, finding comprehensive plans, with affordable premiums.

And there are also issues and challenges with our workforce.

In this case, finding a career, even a simple job if you have a disability.

The truth of the matter is, despite laws in place that protect workers with disabilities, the US does not have a great track record of helping folks with disabilities get hired.

However, with all that being said, lost Angeles is trying to find some new ways to change this dynamic.

And in part, this begins with a unique collaboration with the Los Angeles Unified School District and the business industry.

For years, L.A. Unified has been providing rigorous vocational training and instructional programs for students with disabilities.

With what's known as alternate curriculum, things like auto detailing, building in groundwork, culinary arts, horticulture, or even media technology.

This individualized instructional program is basically designed to help students with their independence, to increase their vocational skills, even prepare them for their adult life.

Well, in addition to all the training programs just mentioned, you can now add another vocation to the list aquaculture.

So exactly what is aquaculture and how our young people with disabilities participating in this field sustaining US produce are tied?

Watson has the amazing story of how what's known as Blue Technology Lab is preparing young adults with disabilities for aquaculture employment opportunities with the Aquarium of the Pacific.

We're excited to have our grand opening of our Blue Technology lab.

It's designed to prepare young adults with disabilities for employment down the Port of Los Angeles in aquaculture.

We have a 52% hiring rate of our graduates.

The national average is less than 20%, so we more than double exceeded the national average.

So to help this happen, we have Consistency Inc, who's our business partner that helped design the the lab that we have here today.

So we first got involved with Williamsburg as a business in the community.

We were looking for an opportunity to have people with special needs, get job training so that they could have some meaningful employment.

We now employ some of their graduates and they work for our company behind me.

We are growing shrimp for any aquarium that needs more food for their fish.

I love everything about this class, just being able to learn about this, about their brains through being able to help grow them, feed them how to keep their tanks clean at all times.

Measure how much salt there is in each take.

This is the equipment that I usually use to measure the salt.

All I do is I take this oh, syringe thing.

I put it in the this metal tank and I put it on to I take this put it right here where the water is supposed to go.

Turn it on and then proceed and it'll give me the salt burns and it's 60 to 62% of salt.

That's how much salt there is in that little tank you put it in and see how deep it, although I can't tell you can't see it.

It measures like how high it is, imagines the height of the water, the clarity of the water.

Oh, it's important for the water to be clear because this can easily just be living in their own poop and food.

So these tanks back here are what keeps the water, what keeps the water filtered?

It keeps although it keeps the tanks clean at all times.

Yeah.

William Burke Grand Transition Center is such a unique place because all of the students that we serve between the ages of 18 to 22 are on the alternate curriculum.

And when they come to this school, they have opportunities to develop skills and to participate in activities that they otherwise wouldn't have at the generalized campuses.

And for instance, that includes student leadership opportunities, intramural sports drill team.

And so our students come and they have the opportunity to participate in these very inclusive activities.

They develop such a tremendous amount of skills.

First of all, the competence and I can think of so many students who have come to our school in the past after leaving the local high schools and they just developed this this maturity and this confidence in who they are and what they can do.

And we just see them develop into such beautiful young adults and have gotten jobs in the community and are continuing to provide for themselves and their families.

The work that we do here prepare students for employment, but it also helps us to fund our program.

And so what we do is students learn how to cultivate brine shrimp from eggs all the way up to adult brine.

And with our partners, we sell that to aquariums.

So across the country, students learn to back them up, ship them out, and when we sell them, the profits come in and just generate more materials, more supplies that we get as program running.

So we're we're hoping to be fully self-sustaining within six months.

It's amazing to see students that have difficulties with reading and writing to take on more challenging tasks like this and succeed.

And they're really excited just to be part of adult and work in an industry that they never thought they'd have the possibility to explore.

Thank you.

Sustaining US producer Ty Woodson for that report.

Now something new on this program.

We're about to introduce a new segment here on sustaining us that we plan to bring you every month if possible.

We're trying to identify some of the most sustainable and environ mentally friendly businesses, companies, corporations are located in the Southern California region.

And we know you are all out there doing great things.

So today we bring you our first in a series of what we're dubbing sustainable biz feature reports, sustainable biz here on sustaining us.

Imagine having a family business for over 150 years of almost unheard of.

Well, Gavina Gourmet Coffee is a coffee importer and roaster located in Vernon, California.

The company founded back in 1870 in Cuba, produces the Don Francisco's Coffee, various Gavina coffee brands and other private label coffees.

So we were curious how can coffee be cultivated, so to speak, in a sustainable way?

For example, a product made with integrity, a product that helps preserve the environment.

A company that certainly makes money yet gives back as well.

For example, gives back to its dedicated employees to help sustain the workforce and gives back to the community.

A company where business decisions in part not in total, in part are based upon sustainable business practices as well.

We traveled to Vernon just outside downtown Los Angeles to find out, and here is sustaining us producer Tony Perez with our story.

My name is Lisette, giving you Lopez, and I'm part of the fourth generation of the Gavina family and coffee.

Don Francisco's coffee was actually born right here in Los Angeles.

My family has been roasting coffee in California for over 50 years, but our history is much, much longer.

We've been in the coffee business for over 150 years, and it all goes back to Cuba, where my great grandfather first became a coffee farmer, and he was the first one to cultivate coffee, grow coffee, roast coffee.

And he taught everything he knew to my grandfather.

Eventually, my family left Cuba for political reasons, but my grandfather always dreamed about getting back into the coffee business.

And so this gentleman helped him identify an opportunity to buy a roaster.

And this roaster actually belonged to Bob's Big Boy restaurants, because in the sixties and fifties, restaurants and grocery stores used to roast their own coffee and so this other coffee roaster was taking over the Bob's Big Boy business, and now this roaster became available.

And so my grandfather bought it for the equivalent of $500 and basically rented a truck with his with his kids and friends and family members, went down to San Diego or to Carlsbad, which where they were located, dismantled the roaster and brought it back up to Los Angeles.

And by Easter of 1967, the roaster was set up.

And the giving is we're back in the roasting business.

We started very, very small in a very, very humble way in about 1000 square foot facility.

We started roasting coffee.

That was in 1967 and from that moment this business really became my my family's focus.

Everything was reinvested back into this business, even in the beginning.

My dad still worked in a restaurant at night.

He worked at the Sportsmen's Lodge while he delivered and sold coffee during the day.

My uncle worked as a mechanic.

My other uncle also worked as an engineer, and so they were working their own jobs, but also doing their part to help and support and really found this company together with their parents and get it going.

And once, you know, we started to learn about the different markets and tried to expand a little bit more, we needed a little bit more space.

So from a thousand square feet and 4 to 5000 square feet, and then we bought our first building, which was about 25,000 square feet just down the street here in Vernon.

But in in the late nineties we bought the building that we're in today.

It's about ten acres just south of downtown Los Angeles in the city of Vernon.

And it was the first time that we were able to build a building to the way that we actually run our business.

And so we have all of our manufacturing in the center of the building and all of the raw materials and finished product around the outside of the building.

So it's a completely closed facility.

We also operate under SKF, which is a global Food safety act, to make sure that our coffee is produced in a manner that safe, that nobody can tamper with it, so that when the consumer enjoys that at home, they have absolute confidence that the product inside was made with integrity.

We are definitely a family business and many of our employees, we have nearly 300 employees today.

Many of our employees have been with us for at least I think the last time I checked, the tenure was an average of 15 years.

And so we're very proud of that.

We also have multi-generational employees, so their parents worked here.

They now work here very similar to me, right?

I work with my family.

We're multi-generational.

And it just it's wonderful because we really do take care of each other.

We encourage each other to grow, to learn.

And so we do invest in our coffee family by helping to provide education reimbursement.

We have acculturation classes to help the employees prepare for their citizenship and to also improve on their English language skills, which was definitely one of our struggles when we came when we first came from Cuba as the language barrier.

So just having that added support and knowing that you are supported in and your life goals and your personal and professional growth is very important and we're happy to provide that support for our employees, our family, because our roots are literally planted in the coffee fields in Cuba.

We have a very strong connection to the land and we really do believe that it's our duty to help preserve our planet.

Our coffee isn't just of high quality and delicious.

We also are doing our part in recycling our packaging.

So we have partnered with TerraCycle, which is a global recycling company, to now make our bags, capsules and pods recyclable.

And it's very easy for the consumer to participate.

You just sign up on TerraCycle dot com, you collect your pods.

So here you have your pods in any box with ideally with a with a liner and then you download a shipping label for free.

And then the more you recycle, the more points that you earn for your charity.

So it's a really great program.

It's free for you and you're doing your part to help us keep our packaging out of landfills.

So what happens to these positive capsules after the recycled after TerraCycle receives them?

It's really interesting.

So these capsules are the coffee inside is removed and the capsules are ground down and melted into these little pellets.

And then these pellets are transformed into another type of plastic material, giving our capsules a second life.

So here's an example.

This is a lumber material that's made out of those little capsules that's used for decking or materials for playgrounds.

And TerraCycle even makes this really cool.

Watering can so help us keep our packaging out of landfills and join the TerraCycle recycling program with Gavina and together will help preserve our environment.

The future of Gavina is very bright and consumers are more and more demanding.

You know, innovative products in coffee, but also products that are authentic and that are produced in a sustainable manner.

And so that's really the future is is to continue to do what we do, make great products, bring innovation to the market, and continue to make business decisions that consider sustainable business practices, too, because it's important.

We don't want to borrow against the future.

We want to be able to sustain ourselves for what our needs are today, but not borrowing against future generations.

Thank you so much.

Sustaining us producer Tony Perez for that great report.

Now, if you own a company in Southern California or you work for a so-called company and you believe you're doing great things in the world of sustainability, just direct message me at Davin is our news on Twitter.

It's David is our news on Twitter.

Let me know about you or you can simply go to KLCC dot org and click Contact us to tell our producers about your company.

We'll read all your information and possibly sustaining us could select your company for our next Sustainable Biz feature report.

Now, from searching for the most sustainable companies to the search for something of a completely different sort in our continuing content sharing partnership with public media and PBS stations all throughout the U.S., we travel from Vernon, California, to the Pacific Northwest in search of the Sierra Nevada Red Fox, the Sierra Nevada Red Foxes, one of the rarest mammals in all of North America.

The red foxes also proven to be a most elusive species, even to the best of researchers and scientists trying to track them.

So just exactly what is this Sierra Nevada Red Fox and where has this amazing creature been all these years?

To find out, we travel to the Central Cascade Mountains and visit with our public media partner, OPB, Oregon Public Broadcasting for this report.

All right.

Here in Oregon's central Cascade Mountains, wildlife biologist Jamie Bowles is in search of a tiny fox.

So we go to pick it up a little bit.

I'm up here looking for a particular fox.

It's the surface of the Sierra Nevada, a red fox, number 38.

Most folks are familiar with red foxes, the commonly found around the world, but a species of red fox that Jamie is trying to find here.

The Sierra Nevada red fox is both rare and elusive.

They're very, very little known about the Sierra Nevada red fox.

In fact, the bulk of the research has been done here in Oregon just during the last three years.

The beeping antenna tool that Jamie is using is common to wildlife biology.

It's called radio telemetry.

Telemetry is a lot like being a mountain goat.

She previously captured the individual fox She calls Smurf 38 and placed a transmitting radio collar on it.

Now she's trying to get close enough to the fox to be able to download the data that the caller has been recording.

He's tucked himself up into the tree line.

Telemetry, I think, is is very fun to do because you're having to adjust the gain on your receiver to find that exact tone that you're looking for.

The perfect tone in proximity sounds a certain way.

And so I've sort of, you know, cued my ear to that.

And what I'm looking for is has the fox shifted in direction?

Am I still getting closer or has the fox now turn and the fox is behind me?

Yes, it came out around.

Here and he's just skirting right right beside us.

I'm always trying to figure out exactly what it is that they're thinking.

I think they're at least four steps ahead of me.

You know, I know which direction the fox is in and the proximity that it is for me.

Is he close as far as moving away?

Is it moving closer?

But somehow he just keeps managing to get away from me or hiding in plain sight.

One of the reasons that Sierra Nevada red Foxes are so hard to see is because of their small size.

There are only 6 to £10.

So I think this is really fascinating because my cat is larger than these foxes.

The other thing that makes Sierra Nevada Red Foxes so hard to see is their color.

Although Sierra Nevada red foxes or red foxes by species are not necessarily red in color.

They're often black, gray and tan, blending perfectly into the forest.

They do know that they are small enough and they're dark enough.

They know what to blend into that If they don't want to be seen, they're not going to make themselves known.

It's near 38, has quietly slipped around Jamie and headed to higher ground.

It certainly don't look first gave up here.

These foxes are montane, meaning they live in mountains.

There are three subspecies name for the major mountain ranges of the west.

Rocky Mountain, Red Foxes, Cascade Red Foxes and the Sierra Nevada.

Red Foxes.

Biologists knew that there are Montane foxes in the Central Cascades, but it was assumed that they were Cascade Red foxes.

Until DNA tests of hair samples revealed that the foxes were actually Sierra Nevada Red foxes.

In 2016, a trail camera captured what is likely the very first image of a Sierra Nevada red box family at their den.

The dad called.

The tide has returned with a meal while the young kids play and the mother vixen keeps watch.

Of the three montane subspecies of red foxes, the Sierra Nevada red Foxes, the one with the smallest population size.

And so it was really special to find out that here in the Cascades of Oregon that we have this particular subspecies.

The population that lives in the Sierra mountains near Yosemite is estimated to be as few as 15, putting them on the endangered species list.

But no one actually knows how many Sierra Nevada red foxes live in Oregon up to now.

So little has been known about them that anything Jamie can learn is new information.

You know that they're somewhere around you, but somehow I'm just never prepared.

Like I have my phone with me and I'll just catch something out the side of my eye and there will be the fox and I'll be fumbling, you know, to get my camera out.

And if I'm lucky, maybe I'll be able to get a video or a very blurry shot of a critter just boot scooting just right out of range.

You do end up with all these videos and it's it's like Sasquatch, you know, they're all shaky and you're like, No, I swear, it's a fox.

It looks really blurry, but I promise.

Other people sometimes catch unexpected glimpses of Montane Red Foxes.

You're not going to believe this.

Look what I'm looking at right now.

Look at him.

What a beautiful animal.

And then these are all the photos that get submitted to me.

Like, this is a photo from somebody that was driving on the cascade Lakes Highway.

And there's a fox, you know, Tyler Road.

Crazy, huh?

Camouflage.

Here's a good example of how different they look during the summer.

I mean, shorter pelts, for sure.

Not a poofy tail.

The data that Jamie downloads from the radio collars are helping fill in the map, revealing new scientific insights about the foxes.

And the first question, where are they?

Where do they go.

And where are they hanging out?

Out?

Are they staying concentrated in one area or do they go and find other areas for prey sources or in search for mates or another another territory to disperse to?

And these are sort of their routes that they're going.

So each of these angles would be one data point moving to another data point.

And so now what we're discovering is that they do move long distances.

I mean, we'll see in a day if a particular individual move 14 to 16 miles in one day.

And that's something we didn't know before.

And I think we're just at the tip of really discovering exactly what these foxes can do.

My dream would be to start filling in those areas to really see how many foxes we might have here in Oregon.

If Jamie can capture another fox and place a radio collar on it, she increases the chances of collecting more valuable data.

But the Sierra Nevada red foxes are just as hard to trap as they are to track.

So it's not as easy as you just set a trap out and put some bait in it, and then the next day, bam, you're going to have a fox.

I mean, it could be months in between captures.

Right now it's working.

As Jamie makes her rounds, she finds several of her traps have failed urban sprung by other animals.

Came to the very last trap of the trap line, and there's something in it.

But it wasn't a fox.

Instead of a fox, Jamie finds another small carnivore of the forest, a feisty Martin who.

Which is exciting to see because you get to see one of those up close, which is cool.

But now I just went through all that effort and a big walk around and yet Outfoxed again.

I did so out of about 5600 trap nights that we had up until the end of June.

We had captured about 15 foxes.

So 3% success rate.

Yeah, typical day.

After miles and miles of walking in circles, it's nearing the end of the day.

This is one of the very last days of the summer field session, and Jamie is still trying to pinpoint the only fox that currently has a collar on Smurf 38.

So he's down here in this thick stand of trees.

He's not far from us.

I can hear both directions.

He's not far.

He's right there.

You can see a little push through various various areas.

I there at last snare 38 at least a glimpse of him and then he is gone.

Dani's flying fox outfoxed me yet again.

Thank you so much to our public media partner, Oregon Public Broadcasting for that great report.

Now for more information about our program, just click on Kelsey's story and then click.

Contact us to send us your questions, your comments or story ideas so we can hear from you or contact me at @DavidNazarNews on Twitter all one word, @DavidNazarNews on Twitter.

I'll be sure to get back with you and be sure to catch our program here on PBS or catch us on the PBS app for All Things Sustainable.

Thank you so much for joining us for this edition of sustaining us here on KLCS PBS.

I'm David Nazar.