STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Sam Teicher fell in love with coral reefs below the ocean the first time he tried scuba diving as a youngster.

It was like visiting an alien planet, he said. But it was an alien planet that began dying before his very eyes.

Now a young man, Teicher is attempting to combat the death of coral reefs around the world. He’s taking cuttings from living coral and raising them in a laboratory.

It was an endeavor that caught the eye of Wild Gift, an Idaho-based organization founded by Ketchum resident Bob Jonas to support outstanding young leaders with wild ideas that ignite positive change.

Wild Gift has worked with Teicher and others over the past year, taking them on backpacking trips in the Boulder-White Clouds and rafting trips on the Middle Fork-Salmon River to hone their problem solving and brainstorming skills.

The Wild Gift Climate Change of 2016/2017 will return from the Middle Fork River trip tonight. And Wild Gift will throw a reception in their honor from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 13, at the Ketchum Innovation Center, 311 First Ave. N., in Ketchum.

The public is invited to meet the young entrepreneurs and learn about their projects during the reception.

• One of the young men--Alexander Wankel of Kai Pacha Foods--has developed a milk made of a type of quinoa that’s most adaptable to climate change but overlooked by marketers.

  His idea: To create markets for some of the most adaptable and nutritionally valuable plants in the world, which are being threatened with extinction because of being ignored. At the same time he’s protecting agro-biodiversity, he hopes to provide a fair income for indigenous farmers.

  Wankel said the quinoa is grown at 13,000 feet in the flat Antiplano of the Andes by traditional tools, including handheld picks and foot plows. The farmers rotate it with barley and other crops and le the land lie fallow to maintain healthy soil.

  The Peruvian Milk Quinoa is higher in iron and fiber than the quinoa found in American supermarkets, he said. And it’s resistant to bugs and other problems. 

  A wild quinoa that looks like pepper is quite tasty, he said. A brilliant red-colored quinoa’s outer layer is full of antioxidants and can be used in used in soup or salad. Another can be made into biscuits like energy bars.

• Arun Gupta is developing solar thermal projects through his Skyven Technologies that provide emissions-free air conditioning to commercial and industrial facilities, even on cloudy days. Gupta has been working on a pilot project at the University of Texas-Arlington, where he developed solar panel with an efficient that he says is three times higher than the average panel, he said. At 480 degrees, they’re also hotter than other systems, making them a good fit for factories, which need high temperatures.
• Bryce Andrews is working with the Ranch Project in Montana, teaching ranchers about climate-smart sustainable ranching practices, such as rotating grazing and utilizing sheep to eat noxious weeds, such as leafy spurge, that actually improves their milk and meat. Spurge is more nutritious than alfalfa, he said.
• Tsechu Dolma founded the Mountain Resilience Project in Nepal, building dozens of greenhouses while teaching the Nepalese how to market their produce.

Wankel said the Wild Gift trips have taught him to appreciate wildness, that nature isn’t something to be totally conquered.

“The trip honed my leadership skills as I observed the others,” he added.

“It was the wild in the wilderness that caused our ancestors to innovate,” observed Teicher. “And we got a taste of that, as most of the time we were off trail, blazing our own trail to get to a peak.”