2021-01-19 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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And so there have been multiple research projects in the area to address the best ways to manage for that and the best ways that we can protect the forest that remains. Blackmore and Vitousek in 2000 published a paper where they analyzed aerial imagery from almost 50 years – from the 1950s to the 1990s and they qualified the change in forest structure over that time and then they also created a model based on fuel load levels on how fire can and will respond to the different grass types and they basically concluded that even as grazing causes gradual declines in forest cover – however, it protects forests from rapid loss to destructive fires are reducing the ability of grass fuels to carry fire – they also concluded that grazing in drier area reduces the risk of fire not only by controlling the accumulation of fuels but also by controlling the spread of more flammable ground species. Wada et. al. 2017 – they did a cost analysis of what it would of cost to manually control invasive grasses in Puuwaawaa and they concluded that it would be about 4.6 million dollar a year just to go and cut grass, which we all cut grass way too much. And then also Castillo in 2007 – they compared three different treatment types and combinations of those treatment types – they applied herbicide, prescribed berms and grazing in Puuanahulu and they completed that grazing is a very cost effective tool for fuel and management. It’s real simple – get the grasses down and fire’s less likely to spread and using animals to do the work for you is going to be a lot cheaper than paying somebody to do it – contracting it out. And after 2000 when the long term lease ended the grazing didn’t completely phase out – we just stopped that long term lease so we continue to have grazing on an annual access permit basis and so we can see that in those areas where there’s appropriate stocking rate there have been very few fires and then we’ve also recently completed a 5 million dollar CIP project – water improvement project – and because of the good rains in the last couple years we’ve – talking to the rancher – he thinks that we’ve captured and are storing an additional 7 million gallons on top of the 8 million that was already there – whatever it was – but quite a bit of water that we’re storing which will increase our capability to move cattle to different areas, especially below the highway and hopefully as we’ve seen in the other areas minimize the risk of fire. And finally, just across from – so the map shows from 1975 to 2011 – just that there have been fires that have happened in the area historically – but going through our records I was able to find between 2006 – so the last 14 years – 2006 to present – in the areas where we have 5