2023_07_18 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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fountain grass and fountain grass – I’ve talked about fire-loving – fountain grass is super fire- loving compared to the other grasses. It burns more, it comes back quicker and so by using cattle to graze and keep those fuel loads down, it keeps that species – it not only keeps the fuel loads down, which keeps the fire from spreading but it also can keep that species from spreading into areas where other maybe less flammable grasses are. Now is the result of that search – next slide. Oh, sorry, I told you next slide and I’m looking at my screen that’s not connected and it didn’t move over here but it moved over here, um, so \[unclear – sounds like Wada\] is calling 2017 – their research was based around restoring the forest and the best way to restore the forest. They did kind of a cost estimate of using manual control and other types of control to reduce those grass types and other non-native vegetation and so just the result of their research was it would cost 4.6 million dollars a year just to if you were going to manually – so weed eating – maybe mowing in some areas if that was possible, um, 4. – it would costs us that much money – 4.6 million dollars a year just to keep the grasses down to a level that would reduce fire from spreading. Next slide. And so, one other research that was done was Castillo et al in 2007 where they compared – they had different plots in Puuanahulu where they compared prescribed burns, glyphosate operations so Roundup application and grazing and different combinations of those things, and they basically concluded that livestock grazing with proper stopping rinks is the most cost effective tool for fire load, fuel load management in Puuanahulu. Next slide. So, this is kind of currently, I guess, where we’re at. While we don’t have long terms leases for grazing we do allow grazing in the areas – most of the areas that, I guess, where we consider appropriate where the area has been so degraded that there’s not anything to protect anymore and it’s only grass, and so we do allow on an annual permit, couple of different people to graze in Puuanahulu and Puuwaawaa. This map on the side there they’re just kind of shows different ignition sources for fires \[unclear\]. It’s not the most up-to-date, but sort of like 15 years or something like that. Most of our ignition sources occur near the highway and so our focus has been keeping fuel loads along highways as low as possible. This – I should have spent a little more time updating this slide – since I gave this presentation – we have completed that 5 million dollar water project – CIP project up in Hale Puila and Puuwaawaa – which allows us to move water all the way from the forest bird sanctuary to makai of the highway and because that is finally been fully implemented – we have been able to issue a permit for the makai section of the highway where they’ve increased the herds – I think they have about 600 head of cattle down there so it was – I think it was 1,000 – it kind of goes up and down – it’s between 1,000 and 1,400 head mauka and now another 600 head makai – so about 2,000. And then, I know that the Bertelmann lease – the Keakealani lease or – it’s not a lease but historically what it was called, l think they have two to three hundred head in there. So somewhere between, you know, about 2,000 head of cattle grazing to keep those grass loads down to help protect against fire spread. Next slide – this is just I guess a review of how we feel that has worked or been effective so if you look – the red indicates areas where we have had fire and the spread of those fires I think up until, it says, from ’75 – 2011. If you look on the I guess kind of middle portion where it’s mostly – there’s some red but it’s mostly green and it’s mauka of that Highway 190 – that’s where we’ve had the main cattle grazing kind of consistently for the most period of time and we’ve had, as you can see, far less fires in there. The fires that have come in have been smaller and that’s mostly because those cattle are keeping those grasses down and I would also say that because there’s an extensive road network in there with the fencing and stuff – we are able to respond more quickly to those fires as well – so it's kind of a combination of the two, I guess the reason I say that is because I guess one caveat, none of this is perfect – and the largest fire in our recorded history happened couple years ago on Parker Ranch, which is highly grazed, but it was a, I think, kind of special conditions there and super high winds and super dry and in 7