2023_08_15 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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right, so I think it is really important for us to keep in mind that this is a tool and it can create safer conditions for firefighters, but there are limits to when you got 40 – 50 miles an hour winds super-hot dry conditions that grazing might not necessarily affect the speed as those fire moves across the landscape and so that is like the other dimension there like the intensity, like how much fuels can be consumed like put off heat like that release all this energy, but the second piece that’s really important especially giving the firefighters a chance here is how quickly that fire moves across the landscape can they get ahead of it, can they get between us and our communities right, so that’s the problem we saw doing these recent fires. The fires last week by the time of its ignition, then I don’t care what kind of early warning system of sirens and all these things, by the time that thing starts and the time it reaches the house, homes in this case umm it was literally within minutes and so that is where we really need to thinking it’s probably about. All the strategies that are out there, it’s probably beyond of what, I can talk about today. So, targeting grazing is something we’ve been advocating for a long time, but the questions remain what about the feral ungulates? What affect are these wild animals having on the fuel and that really bring us to this paper that my student worked on Tim Zu, and again set up for this, he was doing really careful detail studies of the fuel composition, what kind of vegetation standing - lying, what kind of grass? All the quantities of fuel that is out there to burn on the landscape and had these paired plots, one plot on one side of the fence where ungulates were excluded, another plot inside the fence, where they were wild animals and I can just share the kind of take home. First, let’s look at a map and you can see where he had all these plots set up you can kind of see the rain fall, because that’s really what I kind of titled it, “Ungulates like it Green,” I think that’s really the kind of the take home. Let see if I can share the screen this, so you guys see that map, look at the sites, you see it okay, these are the sites that he sampled fuel, he had kind of you know this I think was Pohakuloa, there was some sites Puwaawaa and he also got to some wetter site this was pretty dry over here, and this is really important to understand moisture zones and where he is seeing the effect, right, the ungulates on fuels and where fire is most common this is where again, the only study we have, take it with a grain of salt. What he really found when he started looking at, what is the difference of these fuel type, is that, hang on here, okay this is a little messy here, but what you need here I should have helped with these charts. What we are looking at, he has sites, these are his sites, right this Dark line, little H’s they look like little h’s on their side the dark one are the fenced areas and fenced and ungulates removed and the gray, light gray is where you have ungulates grazing and so what he found he goes from very dry to moderately dry to wet, pretty wet and kind of in the middle mesic is like between wet and dry. And so, what we are seeing as we go from very dry to wet is the difference between the dark that’s the fence area and the light which is the unfenced area increases. So, in other words what we took from this is the biggest effect of grazing by wild ungulates this is happening in wetter areas, right so it’s really where and this makes sense I think and if you are an animal biologist think about their ecology they like quality forage, cows are no different, right, they really going where the forage quality which is the best where it’s greener at higher elevation, and moisture areas. This is why when grazers are talking about use of cattle for fire risk 9