Hilo Vegetative Fuels Management Mapping Workshop with DOFAW

Mapping with DOFAW representatives in Hilo.

As a hub of wildfire protection efforts across the Hawaiian Islands, we are always looking for ways to bring people together to solve some of our most complex wicked problems. The Hawaiian Islands have been struggling with invasive species spread for decades, but now we are seeing what happens when invasive flammable plants take over the landscape and allow fires to spread more quickly and over larger areas. By controlling or managing flammable vegetation at the landscape-level, we can make great strides towards reducing the wildfire risk on our islands.

That’s why HWMO is coordinating a statewide vegetative fuels management mapping project — a rapid assessment to understand the vegetation management needs and priorities of landowners and land managers throughout the Hawaiian Islands. DLNR Division of Forestry and Wildlife (DOFAW) and University of Hawaii CTAHR Cooperative Extension are key partners in the effort.

The vision for the project is that the resulting maps will lead to 1) better prioritization and communication of vegetative fuels management on the landscape-scale and 2) enhance project coordination between organizations and funding opportunities.

On September 18, we linked up with DOFAW for a workshop in Hilo to map current and desired vegetation management activities. Activities could include any vegetation reduction or conversion projects such as roadside mowing, fuelbreaks, grazing rotations, clearing around structures or power poles, brush abatement or thinning, tree trimming, loi restoration, agriculture, and native forest restoration.

Maui Vegetative Fuels Management Mapping Meetings and LHWRP Workshop

Mapping with Lance De Silva of DOFAW.

As a hub of wildfire protection efforts across the Hawaiian Islands, we are always looking for ways to bring people together to solve some of our most complex wicked problems. The Hawaiian Islands have been struggling with invasive species spread for decades, but now we are seeing what happens when invasive flammable plants take over the landscape and allow fires to spread more quickly and over larger areas. By controlling or managing flammable vegetation at the landscape-level, we can make great strides towards reducing the wildfire risk on our islands.

That’s why HWMO is coordinating a statewide vegetative fuels management mapping project — a rapid assessment to understand the vegetation management needs and priorities of landowners and land managers throughout the Hawaiian Islands. DLNR Division of Forestry and Wildlife and University of Hawaii CTAHR Cooperative Extension are key partners in the effort.

The vision for the project is that the resulting maps will lead to 1) better prioritization and communication of vegetative fuels management on the landscape-scale and 2) enhance project coordination between organizations and funding opportunities.

Mapping at the LHWRP office with members of the ranching community on Maui.

On June 16 and 17, we had a series of meetings with DOFAW, Alexander & Baldwin, Hana Ranch, and DHHL to map current and desired vegetation management activities in Maui Nui. Activities could include any vegetation reduction or conversion projects such as roadside mowing, fuelbreaks, grazing rotations, clearing around structures or power poles, brush abatement or thinning, tree trimming, loi restoration, agriculture, and native forest restoration. On June 18, we held a workshop in conjunction with Leeward Haleakala Watershed Partnership to gather more data, especially in regards to restoration efforts and grazing areas.

Oahu and Maui Vegetative Fuels Management Mapping Tour

Mapping workshop introduction and Google My Maps Tutorial by Lele Kimball at the Oahu workshop.

As a hub of wildfire protection efforts across the Hawaiian Islands, we are always looking for ways to bring people together to solve some of our most complex wicked problems. The Hawaiian Islands have been struggling with invasive species spread for decades, but now we are seeing what happens when invasive flammable plants take over the landscape and allow fires to spread more quickly and over larger areas. By controlling or managing flammable vegetation at the landscape-level, we can make great strides towards reducing the wildfire risk on our islands.

That’s why HWMO is coordinating a statewide vegetative fuels management mapping project — a rapid assessment to understand the vegetation management needs and priorities of landowners and land managers throughout the Hawaiian Islands. DLNR Division of Forestry and Wildlife and University of Hawaii CTAHR Cooperative Extension are key partners in the effort.

The vision for the project is that the resulting maps will lead to 1) better prioritization and communication of vegetative fuels management on the landscape-scale and 2) enhance project coordination between organizations and funding opportunities.

Mapping at Kamehameha Schools with partners on Maui.

On June 26 and 27, our team took a tour to Oahu and Maui to hold workshops with various partners and map current and desired vegetation management activities. Activities could include any vegetation reduction or conversion projects such as roadside mowing, fuelbreaks, grazing rotations, clearing around structures or power poles, brush abatement or thinning, tree trimming, loi restoration, agriculture, and native forest restoration.

The Oahu workshop took place at the University of Hawaii at Manoa campus in a high-tech room fit for a mapping workshop. Koolau Mountains Watershed Partnership and other Koolau Mountains stewards joined us for the workshop. The following day, we held two workshops, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, with land managers on Maui. We had help from our friends from Leeward Haleakala Watershed Partnership, West Maui Mountains Watershed Partnership, Maui Conservation Alliance, and Maui Cattlemen’s Association for getting the word out about the workshops. Big mahalo to them!

Waianae Mountains Watershed Partnership Meeting Presentation

View of the wildland-urban interface of West Oahu from atop Palehua.

HWMO’s Community Outreach Coordinator, Pablo Beimler, met with Waianae Mountains Watershed Partnership on June 26 in Palehua on the leeward slopes of the Waianae Mountains in West Oahu. Pablo presented and introduced to the group the vegetative fuels management mapping project HWMO was coordinating to improve landscape-level prioritization, collaboration, and funding capabilities of fuels management. HWMO will be working with the partnership to hold a workshop in the coming months to gather data for the project.

Banner photo: Conservation managers, members of the Waianae Mountains Watershed Partnership, assess damages to the native forest preserve areas after the Nanakuli Fire in 2016. Photo credit: Dr. Clay Trauernicht, UH CTAHR Cooperative Extension

Annual Kauai Brushfire Meeting 2018

For this year’s annual Kauai Brushfire Meeting, HWMO’s Executive Director, Elizabeth Pickett, flew to Kauai and joined a room full of first responders (including Chief Robert Westerman), other agency officials, and land managers to share updates and plans for the coming months in preparation for wildfires. Kauai may be the Garden Island, but wildfires are a frequent occurrence on the island during drier periods and especially during droughts, which are predicted to be a possibility in the beginning of 2019.

Kauai Brushfire Meeting brings together government, NGO, and local business representatives together to keep each other updated on the latest wildfire news and management projects. Photos are from the 2016 meeting.

Waimea Vegetative Fuels Management Mapping Workshop

We are so grateful to have partners like these!

Mappers hard at work at the workshop.

As a hub of wildfire protection efforts across the Hawaiian Islands, we are always looking for ways to bring people together to solve some of our most complex wicked problems. The Hawaiian Islands have been struggling with invasive species spread for decades, but now we are seeing what happens when invasive flammable plants take over the landscape and allow fires to spread more quickly and over larger areas. By controlling or managing flammable vegetation at the landscape-level, we can make great strides towards reducing the wildfire risk on our islands.

That’s why HWMO is coordinating a statewide vegetative fuels management mapping project — a rapid assessment to understand the vegetation management needs and priorities of landowners and land managers throughout the Hawaiian Islands. DLNR Division of Forestry and Wildlife and University of Hawaii CTAHR Cooperative Extension are key partners in the effort.

The vision for the project is that the resulting maps will lead to 1) better prioritization and communication of vegetative fuels management on the landscape-scale and 2) enhance project coordination between organizations and funding opportunities.

On June 19, we linked up with South Kohala Coastal Partnership for a workshop to map current and desired vegetation management activities in the South Kohala region as part of our larger statewide assessment. Activities could include any vegetation reduction or conversion projects such as roadside mowing, fuelbreaks, grazing rotations, clearing around structures or power poles, brush abatement or thinning, tree trimming, loi restoration, agriculture, and native forest restoration. The workshop took place at the homey Anna Ranch and brought together many familiar faces all working to make South Kohala a restored, healthy, abundant, and resilient place, especially in the face of growing wildfire challenges.

Kauai Watershed Alliance Presentation

Flammable fuels on Kauai.

On April 12th in Lihue on Kauai, Pablo Akira Beimler, HWMO’s Community Outreach Coordinator, gave a presentation to the Kauai Watershed Alliance. The KWA is a multi-partner alliance that encompasses 144,004 acres of Kauai’s uppermost watershed areas, where there are rich remnants of native forest important to the health of the Garden Island. Pablo introduced the group to an important effort that HWMO was working on and invited KWA members to be a part of the effort. What’s the effort? We are conducting a statewide rapid assessment to better understand the vegetation management needs and priorities of landowners and land managers. This will help all of us plan, coordinate, and implement effective fuels management projects at the landscape-level, rather than in a piece-meal fashion.

TELE Workshop - Wildfire Breakout Group

Wildfire Breakout Group

On February 22 and 23 in Kaneohe, HWMO and a group of HWMO’s partners from University of Hawaii CTAHR, DNLR Division of Forestry and Wildlife, Guam Forestry, and Honolulu Fire Department gathered for a breakout discussion on how to improve engagement around the wildfire issue in Hawaii Kai and Waianae. The discussion was part of a TELE Workshop, a project of the Sustaining Family Forests Initiative, a collaboration between Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Center for Nonprofit Strategies. During the workshop, participants learned the ins and outs of designing and implementing more effective programming and outreach with landowners. We found the training to be incredibly useful and it will help us better our own wildfire engagement strategies.

Banner photo credit: DLNR Division of Forestry and Wildlife

Collaborative Vegetation Management Mapping Workshop 1 - Mauna Kea Partners

Mauna Kea partners were busy at work mapping fuels management projects on Google MyMaps.

Across the state, there are many vegetation management projects that are helping to reduce the fire threat around natural/cultural resources and near communities. However, there currently isn’t a way to track all of these projects and the desired areas for future management of flammable vegetation. Stemming from an idea communicated to us from an HWMO Technical Advisor and US Fish and Wildlife partner, Dawn Bruns, we have received US Forest Service funding to create a statewide database and map of vegetation management projects. 

Meeting participants worked in groups to map their fuels management projects.

We held our first workshop with our partners from the Mauna Kea Watershed Alliance (MKWA) and Three Mountains Alliance (TMA) on January 30 at the Hawaii Innovation Center in Hilo. Elizabeth Pickett, HWMO Executive Director, started the workshop off with an introduction to the project, emphasizing how important this project will be for future collaborative fuels management projects. Dr. Clay Trauernicht, Wildfire Extension Specialist of University of Hawaiii CTAHR Cooperative Extension and Co-Coordinator of the Pacific Fire Exchange, gave a brief course on fire science and pre-fire planning and management. Pablo Akira Beimler, HWMO Community Outreach Coordinator, followed with a training on Google MyMaps, which was the main platform we used to collect data from meeting participants. 

Cheyenne Perry, Coordinator of Mauna Kea Watershed Alliance, points out areas where he hopes there can be collaborative vegetation management projects on Mauna Kea.

For the rest of the workshop, meeting participants began mapping their current and desired vegetation management projects on Google MyMaps. Once the projects were mapped, we projected the new data onto a screen and had the groups share about their work areas and what they envision for a more fire-safe Mauna Kea. 

HWMO will be spending the rest of the summer holding workshops across the islands. If you would like to participate, please contact admin@hawaiiwildfire.org. 

Special mahalo to MKWA Coordinator, Cheyenne Perry, and TMA Coordinator, Colleen Cole, for being our first workshop partners. Mahalo also to Mauna Kea Forest Restoration Project and U.S. Army-Garrison for joining our workshop and being our workshop “guinea pigs”!

South Kohala Conservation Action Plan - Climate Action Planning Workshop

Climate change is a serious threat that is already having a major impact in Hawaii, and there are no signs that the threats and impacts will go away. In fact, an overwhelming percentage of scientists predict they will worsen. The Nature Conservancy (TNC), NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCOOS), and South Kohala Coastal Partnership (SKCP) invited various partners who are stewards of South Kohala to discuss climate change threats, impacts, and solutions for 3 days at Anna’s Ranch in Waimea from January 23-25. Using climate change as a framework to update the South Kohala Conservation Action Plan, an effort that started in 2010, the workshop pinpointed six major climate threats that could have a big impact for South Kohala’s coastal and marine resources. 

Teams discuss their rationales behind ranking certain threats higher than others.

On the last day, teams shared their climate action ideas including coastal policy changes and reforestation strategies.

What are those major threats?

Warming of ocean temperature, sea level rise, ocean acidification, reduced rainfall, increased storms, and…you guessed it, more frequent and damaging wildfires. HWMO was invited to speak on the first day to talk about the mauka to makai effects of wildfire: fires in South Kohala have notoriously led to large erosion / flooding events (check out our video on the Kawaihae Fire and Floods for more information). Post-fire sediment that is carried out to the ocean can be detrimental to coral reefs and all who live off of them, including fish and us humans. 

View of Kohala Mountain and the watersheds that connect the vulnerable forests with the sensitive coastlines.

Chad Wiggins of TNC points out mauka to makai connections, while we look out from the ocean towards the coast.

Due to increasing conditions that are ripe for more frequent and severe wildfires in South Kohala, including warmer temperatures, decreasing annual rainfall, and increasing consecutive dry days, we could be in for more destructive land based pollution events that destroy reefs. This goes hand in hand with the scientific predictions of increased storms in Hawaii, which, after a wildfire, can make matters a whole lot worse for erosion and sedimentation and thus for our coastal and marine ecosystems. Check out our infographic on climate change’s impacts on wildfire for more information.

On the 2nd day of the workshop, we were part of a “mauka” breakout group where we ranked the threats of fire, storms, and reduced rainfall as contributors of coastal and marine impacts. Fire repeatedly came up as a major threat that needed to be addressed seriously in South Kohala. 

In order to think BIG about action planning for South Kohala, workshop attendees were invited to join in on an afternoon of sailing from Kawaihae Harbor to Puako. The sailboat was graciously donated by Maile Charters for the purpose of building stronger connections between the various agencies and organizations involved with SKCP and to look at the connectedness of South Kohala from the vantage point of being on the water. As an added bonus, whales and dolphins frequently visited the boat and we were able to swim around Puako’s reefs to experience the beautiful coral and marine life that are critical to the health of our ecosystems and communities. Before an epic sunset, HWMO’s Community Outreach Coordinator, Pablo Beimler, performed spoken word about the Hokulea’s important message that we need to work together as one “Island Earth” and work with Mother Nature rather than against her.

Setting sails for an adventure experienced by various SKCP partners.

Sunsets and whales an added bonus.

The final day of the workshop revolved around finding solutions. Breakout groups developed actions that could improve coastal health and reduce climate threats. Pablo shared HWMO’s vision of having communities be buffered by native and Firewise living fuelbreaks, which would also help bring communities together. Better water management and increased water resources was also a key discussion and was ranked very high by the entire group as an important next step for South Kohala. In another smaller breakout group, TNC’s Chad Wiggins, Hawaii State Parks’ Dena Sedar, and Pablo brainstormed ideas to reforest South Kohala (ranked highly as an important next step) with the intention of reducing wildfire threats, increasing watershed health, and improving community engagement, livelihoods, and employment/career opportunities.

The planning area and what is at stake. Working together is the only path forward to build climate resilience.

After three days with so many enthusiastic, positive, intelligent, and conservation-minded folks, we feel more determined to continue the important work we are doing to make South Kohala a more vibrant area, even in the face of worrying climate predictions. We are more resilient when we work together and that is a major reason why the South Kohala Coastal Partnership exists and is taking on this climate action planning process. We are extremely grateful for being a part of this partnership and look forward to collaborate with all involved to ensure our coastal areas, cultural resources, landscapes, and communities are safe from or adapted to climate impacts such as wildfire.

Thank you to The Nature Conservancy, NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, and South Kohala Coastal Partnership for inviting us to be a part of this monumental effort!