2023_08_15 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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pretty pretty, small, I don’t really, In my opinion I don’t see, I don’t understand the concept I guest, because I think that there is so much space that we could co-manage these resources together. With that being said when we start looking at some of historical changes where they have removed ungulates. I learn most of what I know about fires maybe some of you guys might have known Miles Nakahara who work with the division of forestry and wildlife and so I definitely take some of his anecdotes to heart in the sense that where he had they have seen areas that they fence removed the wild ungulates and but did no other actions right. Took no other actions to reduced fire risk and they had burned fires moved through those areas and hammered some of these kipuka that he had seen over the years. I take that as pretty solid evidence. I’ve also It has come to my attention by concerned citizens looking at the Summit of Mauna Kea as an example, and the fuels that have accumulated there as well, so, my line of argument here is always that especially these dry ecosystems if you are going to do Ungulate management it needs to be ungulate management in the sense excluding them needs to be part of the landscape to be more specific. It needs to be tied with fire mitigation action and I think that’s the news right now and the story right now and it’s hard to talk about this without getting kind of worked up but we are not doing enough that we can that we should be and all I have to say I am open to understanding ways in which wild ungulates can be managed maybe in different ways to reduce that risk and just another anecdote comes to mind is that I’ve had some real cool conversation for example with Kualii Camara, I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, but he’s like talking about his ideas of trying to work with some of the sheep to manage gorse and fires cause by gorse as an example, he’s got some ideas where you can do drives, strategic fencing and things like that, so I think there are a lot of ideas out there but I think as it stand what my students work, well maybe I will start with this and start with targeting grazing and so we’ve been focusing most of my work that were intersecting with grazing has been working with folks like Mark Forum At University of Hawaii cooperative extension specialist grazing management specialist what we’ve been trying to do is promote the idea that our ranchers have knowledge and the tools available animals are a tool in the tool box. So the idea there is that ranchers have knowledge with their cattle around the land and they know when fires is high and they know how to manipulate stocking densities, right, and so this comes from evidence from across the mainland, but we do have some state, some evidence from the state showing that when you target grazing when you manipulate cattle in strategic ways, you can actually knock down the fuel quantities and then you done, there is some modeling work that has been done, okay, like, if you have grass that’s grazed verses you have grassland that is un- grazed, like how does that affect fire behavior, estimated fire behavior, and it’s pretty conclusive when you reduce the quantities of fuels, that it can actually reduce the intensity which fire burns and therefore be less destructive and much more manageable for firefighters. The other important point is that we’re seeing and this is new, the other import point is that we are seeing , really emerging from some of these incidence that we’ve seen just in recent years and the one that really comes to mind, the Mana road fire, that was the second largest that we know of in State history and what the folks at Parker Ranch for example, saw is that the fires rip across grazed pastures even there, 8