Livestock Wala'au
Welcome to the Livestock Wala’au podcast. Brought to you by the Livestock Extension Group of the University of Hawaii Manoa College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources and the Center for Ag Profitability of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. A podcast aimed to provide educational support, information, guidance and outreach to livestock stakeholders in Hawaii and the rest of the U.S. Hosted by Extension Professionals Melelani Oshiro of UH Manoa CTAHR & Shannon Sand of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Livestock Wala'au
S4 Ep11: From Mauka to Makai: How Wildfire Prevention Protects Hawaii's Ecosystem
Elizabeth Pickett of Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization shares her 17-year journey from marine conservation to wildfire prevention, explaining how post-fire erosion damages coastal ecosystems and the organization's evolution to address this connection. After decades developing resources with limited public engagement, the devastating 2023 Lahaina fire dramatically increased awareness and demand for HWMO's wildfire prevention and mitigation materials.
• HWMO started 25 years ago when ranchers, farmers, and firefighters noticed increasing fires but found no existing organizations addressing the issue
• Organization offers comprehensive resources from tracking fire patterns and community wildfire protection plans to residential safety measures and land management strategies
• Provides different levels of support, from free workshops to affordable consultation services that help develop mitigation plans
• Post-fire resources emphasize soil stabilization before replanting, honoring community safety and proper recovery sequence
• Collaborative programs like Firewise Communities and Wildfire Resilient Landscapes encourage neighbors and adjacent landowners to work together
• Fire management requires cross-boundary coordination across diverse groups rather than siloed approaches
• Hawaii-specific resources address unique island challenges including limited native seed availability for post-fire restoration
For more information and resources on wildfire prevention and mitigation in Hawaii, visit the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization website or the Pacific Fire Exchange, a collaborative project with the University of Hawaii.
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Aloha. Today's episode is sponsored by the Livestock Extension Group out of the University of Hawaii Manoa College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience, the Center for Ag Profitability out of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program.
Speaker 3:Aloha and welcome to the Livestock Balao, a podcast aimed to provide educational support, information, guidance and outreach to our livestock stakeholders in Hawaii and the rest of the US. We are your hosts, meli Oshiro and Shannon Sand, and today we are talking with Elizabeth Pickett, who is the co-executive director at the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization. Thank you, elizabeth, for joining us today and taking some time out to talk story with us. Oh, thank you so much for having me. Yeah, so I guess you want to just talk a little bit, maybe give a little bit about your background and your current position with Hawaii Wildfire Management.
Speaker 4:Sure. So I have been with Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization for going on 17 years, wow, and so I never guessed that this would become my career, but it is where I've been a long time. I started off actually with a love of and background in training of more of marine and ocean coastal resources and protection and management. And in Hawaii we have a lot of post-fire erosion that causes sedimentation in our near shore waters and at some point in the early days I didn't understand it was coming from changes to our soil, from upland fires, and I just said, like what can we do to prevent this? Because once it's here it's really hard to deal with. And then somebody said, well then you need to turn around and look uphill and it's fire that we and work to protect our upland upper elevation, higher, you know landscapes, in order to prevent this impact on the coastal waters. And so I kind of turned around and walked uphill, sort of metaphorically, and I've been working in fire prevention and wildfire management ever since.
Speaker 3:That's so cool, so cool, yeah, and I you know that connection doesn't always come across to everyone. You know and how much it does have the impact over our ocean.
Speaker 3:So the stewardship is so important. So I know Hawaii Wildfire has lots and lots of resources. You know and working in extension, we've seen and used and shared many of your resources. You want to talk a little bit about what Hawaii Wildfire sort of organization does and sort of how people can use those resources and how you folks develop some of the resources that you do have.
Speaker 4:Yeah, thank you for that question. It lets me tell our story, because we started off just on the west side of Hawaii Island because fires were increasing and there were ranchers and farmers and firefighters and conservation folks who were really noticing that and when they looked around to see who was working on it, whether through research or prevention, education or whatever there wasn't anything going on in Hawaii. There wasn't anything going on in Hawaii. And so together they started meeting and eventually, within a year or two, founded our nonprofit to be able to fill in the gaps and start laying some groundwork with research and information that could end projects actually on the ground, projects that would better inform and protect communities and natural resource managers to do some of those mitigation actions, preparedness, prevention etc. Over the years. We had to first start laying the groundwork and understanding trends and patterns of fire. So we've been really tracking fire occurrence and it started off again just in West Hawaii. But our organization, like our data and our resources, have really grown to cover the whole state and also our island neighbors in the Western Pacific, and so we work across Hawaii and Guam and Palau and we run also a Pacific Islands area wildfire network, because the trajectory has really been the same throughout our whole region, our Pacific Islands region. So the resources that are available start off with trying to gather the best data we can to understand what's going on with fire where is it burning, what are the ignition sources, etc. So we have that available for Hawaii and the Pacific and so that is the baseline information.
Speaker 4:But from there, in order to do our work as an organization, we really needed to understand how each of us, in many different sectors, can actually participate in preventing fire, in managing landscapes, in protecting communities dealing on the residential side of things, on the land management side of things, and so we identified all the different folks whose lives and jobs intersect in some way with impacting our welfare issues and we started systematically developing materials that could support them in their roles as it relates to fire, and so we have a few buckets of information.
Speaker 4:So we have stuff going on for humans and the built environment policy funding, residential safety measures, welfare preparedness materials. A lot of the work has been focused on protecting communities and supporting communities to take action around their homes and yards, and also at the community, neighborhood level to reduce risk and to manage fuels. But that's like inside the neighborhood, but we have so many wildland areas and they're managed for lots of different purposes. We have restoration forest, you know forest recovery projects going on. We also have grasslands and ranching. We have other kinds of agriculture, so we've really tried to figure out how best to support each of those types of land managers and develop Hawaii specific mitigation measures that can be implemented fuel breaks, just mitigation best practices, and so all of that is available and it sounds like everything in the kitchen sink and it's kind of become that, but partly because we've been the only game in town and we really recognize that what we see on the ground related to wildfire is this whole system of factors.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I mean it affects everybody, whether you're rural or urban or suburban or some sort of subclass of any of those things.
Speaker 4:So yeah, yeah, and seeing as though there was nothing when we started, the organization has now been around. We actually celebrate our 25th anniversary next year, and so you know it's not it wasn't just overnight. We just pumped out all this stuff, it's actually over time. We've identified gaps and then we've worked hard to do to lay down the research and understand and then develop materials in those directions. So we have all of that. That's sort of educational or technical support. And then the other thing that we've been doing is creating, you know, community welfare protection plans which for each region, identify the hazards, look at our risk factors. It looks at our ignition history, and then we have all sorts of agency and community meetings to understand what everybody's concerned about and what their priorities are, and so there is big clearinghouse documents that then we can plan projects on from together. So we have those as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean it's amazing when I look at your website and I've been on some of the project stuff that you know, working with extension and whatnot, and all the resources you guys have are just amazing.
Speaker 4:Well, it's been a long road to get there and develop all those.
Speaker 4:So now I almost feel like shy about how how prolific our publications are and how much there is, and it's like harder now for people to sort through.
Speaker 4:You know, I never guessed that we would be in that scenario but, honestly, for a long time we were just identifying different roles people play and doing our best to understand why they're not taking action on wildfire and how best we can support them and what kind of information they need.
Speaker 4:So while we were doing all of that, it doesn't mean that people were using it yet, and so we were just in production mode because we weren't sure how else to influence the whole system. And we have community programs, we have practitioner training programs, but until we had so many large fires in 2023, and we had a lot of burn and we had loss of life and loss of structure, it was a huge change and now all those resources are being used. But it took us the whole 20 something years to be able to meet that moment and that level of interest by that diversity of players. So I'm so glad we just kept producing, because I wasn't ever be all used, and then it's totally being used now, but we could have done that overnight, like it really did take two days.
Speaker 2:It was good that you had the time to develop. I mean, that's the thing. Any sort of curriculum, I guess, is the word I'm going to use, but curriculum and resources, it takes time to develop that. I mean I don't know. Mele knows I was like, can you know? It takes a lot of time. You have to research it, make sure you get, like again, unbiased and correct information. You got to do all the. I mean it's a lot of steps in that process before you even develop just a basic document and or plan, let alone training of folks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know, I think with wildfire we really have to look historically and learn from that and proactively start to think that and proactively start to think right, and that's sort of where those resources come from. Right, because you you don't know what, what the future has, but we know how things have been in the past and anticipating I hate to say it, but sometimes anticipating the worst, the worst scenarios, sometimes being prepared Right and I always have that saying right better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
Speaker 2:That's what I what I've.
Speaker 3:You know I've always said that to everyone and I, you know I might be the one that overpacks my bags when I go out in the field, but that's okay, it's true Cause you do have everything.
Speaker 2:It is kind of great.
Speaker 4:We would make a good team too, cause I always had my emergency kit I always have way too much in my backpack, et cetera and I almost wonder if I applied that to our organization. But in this case it worked out. It all started being used right when people were really scared, when they were motivated. I'm so thankful we put in all that work and the reality is I had actually just come back from a long vacation like my first long vacation and then I came back. First day of school was August 7th.
Speaker 4:My first day back at work was August 7th, and while I was on vacation I was thinking maybe I'm done in this field because I don't know what else I can do to get people to care about this, to appreciate the risk that we're facing, to take action. The people who were really like the groundswell of movement that we had before in taking action were from community members who had gotten scared before because fire had come close, and land managers and firefighters, but it was just like always, the same group of people and we'd made a lot of inroads already there, but I didn't. I didn't know how to to address the risk at the scale we really have going in Hawaii without funding, without policy and without public will. And so I literally came back to work August 7th, like you know what I can't work overtime on something that I'm just shouting from the rooftops and people aren't taking this seriously. Maybe I've done what I know how to do here.
Speaker 4:And then, august 8th, you know, lahaina burned, kula burned, big Island burned, and it was a game changer. Know, lahaina burned, kula burned, big Island burned, and it was a game changer. And so the stark difference between August 7th and August 8th was like I will never forget the day our entire story changed, you know. And now we couldn't even keep up with the requests for information. So it's just, it's totally unexpected. You can't prepare for that, but in a way, we had been preparing by developing all of that for so many years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean it's sad that it takes that to really get people to be a little bit more proactive, unfortunately, but yeah.
Speaker 4:I mean I'm in prevention and that's how it is everywhere. But I had never really appreciated that that's how the world works, that people care after the bad thing happens, because I just kept thinking we could make a good case for let's never have that bad thing happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cause we had a big fire here Six, eight months ago, almost a year ago, yeah, eight months ago. It was one of those things. Prior to we had tried to do prevention training again I know Mellie I'm sure has done some of that where we put it on in conjunction with emergency responses and stuff and it was very difficult to get people to come. And then unfortunately, we've had, kind of like many States, a rash of wildfires everywhere and yeah.
Speaker 4:I mean, I guess human nature. We're all so full of so many different things we're raising our kids, we're commuting to work, all the things Right, and so it's hard to penetrate all of that until it's really important yeah, pop it up into the higher priority. So I've, I've reckoned with that because I think that's just reality and and um. But I am thankful at least now wildfire is up on people's priority lists and I hope it stays that way a while because other things will take back over, I think. But we're trying to really meet the moment and support folks to really learn as much as they have the interest in right now and be supported to start taking action. And we're trying to plug folks into programs that support them over the long term so that we sort of hook them now and support them now but they're in it for the long game and not just like a quick, a quick interest and then it dissipate. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So you mentioned earlier about creating sort of a mitigation plan and those resources now is so if someone comes and says you know I have this property, is there, is that something that you can help folks with, to sort of maybe even visit with them and say you know, kind of identify some of those higher risk areas on their, in their area, in their Absolutely so.
Speaker 4:We kind of offer it in a bunch of different stages depending on where their interest is. So one we do trainings all the time on mitigation best practices, how to write your mitigation plan, the considerations, how to evaluate your landscape for welfare risk. So we have trainings, but those are more like workshops, just a nonprofit. So we're always hustling and competing for grant funds, but our one area where we can raise money for our organization is just to have charge for our services, and they're way less than an expensive consultant would be, but it covers our time, which is really what we're trying to do. And then we'll go out and we'll work with the landowner and land manager to develop the mitigation plan, and so a lot of folks use us for that. And then there's kind of an intermediate one which is that you know we'll do site visits and advise and guide while the folks on the land actually write their own plan. And so we we provide different levels of support depending on what the interest is and what our capacity is to to support that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's great Because sometimes it's always useful. So we were talking about biosecurity the other day and same thing building that biosecurity plan. Sometimes it's useful to have that outside eye of something that you might not have always thought about as being a risk right and you know, using information historically about wildfires and those ignition sites and all those different fuels that can be out. There is so important to have and have that information.
Speaker 4:Yeah and both are important, sort of like the outside eyes or the zoom out eyes, like remember this, consider that, have you thought about this? Let's look at the maps and we have data that you might not have. We wanna share it with you. And then the other side of it is like the localized knowledge on what's gonna work in that area. It's really important too, and so we even when we develop the plan.
Speaker 3:It's so it's in lockstep and tight partnership with the folks on the ground too, because you kind of need all of that as a package to have a solid mitigation plan right, yeah, your resources too, and what's available and even, um, logistically right, applying some of those tactics to certain areas might not be, you might might not be able to access it, you know, by car or whatnot, and so thinking about all those things ahead of time is so important. Wow, I think, yeah, I'm really grateful that you, you know that you folks have been there to put these resources together. I think it's very important, you know, being an island community, you know, and there's things that I think have come out from there that I didn't even think about. You know, as far as you know, post fire mitigation.
Speaker 4:Is that also resources that we can find on your folks website locally to do post-fire assessments and understand where the burn severity to the soil and the vegetation has been the worst? Because we want to emergency like like, stabilize those soils, because that's what contributes to landslides and erosion and runoff and all the things that end up affecting the ocean as well, but also just public safety. And you know, because our agencies tend to be underfunded, they really just focus on suppression alone and not necessarily the afterfire piece. And because we don't have national forests and we don't have a lot of national or federal lands, on federal lands that process is automatically activated. So there's been a lot of us trying to work in that space and figure out how we can get something like that going. So there's been a lot of us trying to work in that space and figure out how we can get something like that going within our whole system of agencies and who's available and how to get it funded, etc. But in the meantime, what we did was we developed a post-fire assessment tool that folks who are managing small to large lands can actually do themselves. So at least on your own personal property you can. You can follow a pretty easy guide and and understand where your burn severity is the worst and where you might want to stabilize. And so we kind of have we have a guy that like walks you through that.
Speaker 4:And then we started actually developing some resources because we kept hearing our conservation community say, after it burns, like we need to run in there and we need to plant and we need to, we need to like take advantage of this cleared landscape to get our native plants back in, et cetera, et cetera, and we're like that's really amazing, but you need to stabilize first. And where there is loss of life or loss of human properties, First things first. We need to honor and pay attention to that. And we'll talk plants later, Because I come from a natural resource background, I understand, I get it. We want to plant, we want to restore, we want to reseed or whatever it is, but like we saw in Lahaina, that's there's a lot to do between now and then. We have to make sure people are well, that their health and safety is secured. Then there's a lot of stuff we have to do with the soil before we can plant or rebuild. It doesn't matter if it's the built environment or the natural environment, Like there's a lot. There's a lot of stuff in between there.
Speaker 4:So actually, even before Lahaina, we had just published this post-fire resource called First Things First. Like, remember, like actually this is like a disaster scenario. It's not just all about planting. I feel sensitive about saying that because I have a natural resource background. I came to this with a conservation mindset, but I think if you're not always working in that space, it's not the first thing you think of. You just think of it as an opportunity within your sector.
Speaker 4:So we have a lot of resources that we developed before Lahaina and then since then we've been navigating this new world of how can we honor the recovery effort while also continuing to think of prevention and mitigation. If folks lose their homes, how can we provide support for them to build back safer, even in the scenario where they just need to build fast, and we understand and appreciate that. So are there things we can do and is there guidance we can provide for how they can do the big build back safer and affordably? So we've been working a lot in that post-fire space more recently on trying to figure out how we can best support the different kinds of communities. There are impacted lands and residential areas, and then there are those who weren't impacted that are really scared and concerned and motivated right now, and so there's all the like the our audience ship kind of splintered out into many different kind of buckets, and so now we have a better understanding and we're trying to support all of those different types of interests.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a that's a great point. Yeah, we really have to look at the land post fire and make the best options for the situation right and choose those things based on what we have there and the resources, too right, that we have within the island sometimes can be limited.
Speaker 4:So, yes, Right, well and one more piece of that is even if we wanted to replant, we don't have enough common native seeds to do a giant post-fire reseeding effort. So the more work that's going on in that area with our partners at the university. Dr Clay Trowdard just got a big grant to start to develop some of those seed resources for post-fire. So there's a lot of work going on. But right now on both the Hawaii Wildfire website and the Pacific Fire Exchange website, pacific Fire Exchange is a project that Hawaii Wildfire and our partners at the University of Hawaii do together to develop best available fire science and those types of publications, and on both of those websites we have a lot of resources for post-fire now that there's an interest in that. So so it's been.
Speaker 3:It's been pretty well developed at this point that is amazing, really great, to have you here, elizabeth, to share these resources, you know, and with us and make those connections for everyone and know that that that's there. I mean, sometimes I look at those, the maps of past fires, you know, on the, and it it's quite square, scary to see that, you know, and some of them so close to home. Um, yeah, you know, just it makes me realize, like you know, my, my parents live in rural area, old plantation era, you know, and I walk around the house and I just kind of be like dad. You need to get rid of these things, you know, because you never know, they're still surrounded by by pasture land and you know old sugar cane areas. So, yeah, just it, it. It just sparks different things in you when you start to think about it and looking at your own home and your parents and you know whatnot. So very much appreciate to be able to have those resources to share.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and, if I can add, they're not all just like fact sheets and publications. We really have a lot of like eye contact, one-on-one support that we like to offer. So our Firewise Communities Program is meant to, you know, bring neighborhoods together, to learn together, to take action together. We have a Wildfire Resilient Landscapes Program which, similarly, is for land managers and has coordinating groups that are like multi-landowner, cross-boundary kind of efforts. So we have some really good examples of coordinating groups that have come together so that they can do fuels management or fuel breaks in a way that makes sense on the landscape and not just siloed per property. So, you know, we really try to support action on the ground too, and in order to do that we have to know folks and we have to care about them and we develop relationships and we know them and we really want to be of support. It's not just just website printed kind of materials, it's also that we're here as human beings to sort of be within community and like figure this stuff out together. So a lot of what we do is supporting collaboration too.
Speaker 4:The one thing I I would say is that all of our work is always collaborative and I think that's going to be the key moving forward is just continuing to do things together and recognizing that wildfire made up of a whole system of people, a whole system of factors.
Speaker 4:There's no one stop. So like one easy solution, it's going to take a lot of different things in a lot of different areas, by a lot of different people, and our best, our best possibility to really, you know, protect Hawaii's people in places is to be doing this stuff together, and so that's that's where I think that I think that's where the jewels of all this are, that like as we, our organization was a diverse, our beginning board was a diverse group, and they maintain that this whole time where it's like well, you know, we all have different interests, but we have to figure this out together and some of our program areas are made for by and for lots of different people, and I think that that is a winning strategy because we've seen it be effective and so they're doing it in a silo is just not going to work when it comes to fire. So we really like people to reach out and get to know each other, and then we can all figure this out together.
Speaker 2:That's so awesome yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, we really appreciate you joining us today. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it. Like Mele said, we hope our listeners found this informative and that it's going to be useful for them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, make sure to follow us on our social media pages the Livestock Palau Livestock Extension Group, if you haven't already, and be sure to visit the UHC TAR Extension website and our YouTube channel, listed in the show notes.
Speaker 2:Yep, as Meay said, for additional information about this topic, you can see those show notes of the podcast the description box of the YouTube page. Thanks for listening to the Livestock of Ala'au. Before we go, show some love for your favorite podcast by leaving us a review anywhere you listen to this and then stay tuned for next month's episode.
Speaker 3:Yep. Thanks again to our sponsors the Livestock Extension Group of the University of Hawaii, manoa College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience, the Center for Ag Profitability of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program. Mahalo for listening, a hui hou. A hui hou. Thank you.