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S5 Ep 03: Big Island Invasive Species Committee (BIISC): Risks, Responses, And Resources

• Season 5 • Episode 3

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We talk with Franny Brewer of the Big Island Invasive Species Committee about how prevention, early detection, and community reporting protect Hawaii’s farms, forests, and neighborhoods. From port monitoring to nematode injections, we map the tools anyone can use to slow the spread.

• Role of BIISC across prevention, detection, response, and education
• Port monitoring for CRB, RIFA, mosquitoes, and Japanese beetle
• Early detection using iNaturalist and formal plant ID
• Prioritizing threats with Hawaii Pacific Weed Risk Assessment
• Widespread pests education via Hawaii Ant Lab methods
• Two line spittle bug impacts on pasture and spread
• Queensland longhorn beetle damage to kukui, cacao, ulu, citrus
• Nematode trunk injections as a targeted control
• Devil weed toxicity to cattle and pasture takeover risk
• Outreach in communities and training for frontline workers
• Choosing non-invasive plants with PlantPono.org
• How to report sightings with clear photos and samples

Links: https://www.biisc.org/

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SPEAKER_02:

Aloha, today's episode is sponsored by the Livestock Extension Group of the University of Hawaii, Manoa College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience, the Center for Ag Profitability out of the University of Nebraska, and the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program.

SPEAKER_01:

Aloha, welcome to the Livestock Fallow, a podcast aimed to provide educational support, information, guidance, and outreach to our livestock stakeholders in Hawaii and the U.S.

SPEAKER_02:

We are your host, Melee Oshiro and Shannon Sand. Today we are going to be talking with Franny Brewer, who is the program manager at Big Island Invasive Species Committee. Oftentimes I feel like it's always been called BISC when I hear it.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh yeah. We're excited for you to be here today to talk to us. And thank you for taking time to join us. I know we have to move around some dates here, but really happy that you're taking the time for us today. I'm glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me on. Yeah. I think maybe we just start with a little bit about what is BISC, your folks' mission, and sort of um, you know, the structure of your your your organization and kind of what your role is there at BISC.

SPEAKER_00:

Sure. So um BISC is actually a project of the Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit, which is part of University of Hawaii. So just like CTAR, we're also part of UH. And the BISCS, there's an ISC on every major island, and the IS were set up in the early 2000s to really fill in a lot of the gaps that are between state departments or federal departments. You know, there's sort of jurisdictional uh things that happen when you're you're working for a government agency uh where you can only work on state lands or you can only work on certain types of projects, right? And unfortunately, invasive species don't really know boundaries. So they they don't stop at the edge of state lands or like refuse to leave the farm and and not go into the neighbor's backyard or whatever. So um, you know, the isks really work in those areas where, you know, there are limitations to other government agencies. Like we literally go into people's backyards and we'll work on invasive species there. We do a lot of education on things that are already widespread. So um across the entire spectrum of invasive species response, BISC plays a role somewhere in in just about all of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's awesome. Like you said, invasives don't necessarily know they're not supposed to go into the neighbor or you know, from farm A to Farm B or ranch A to Ranch A B. They they don't care. They don't care, they're just gonna go wherever they can't they're very inconsiderate that way. They are, they are. I think that's one reason why it's really great, quite frankly, to have you all around. So thank you. Yeah. Now we want to shift gears a little bit because the big question a lot of people have is what exactly, and I think you've hinted at this a little previously, what exactly does BISC do out there on the ground? Because again, I don't know about other people, but I I heard about BISC, I feel like, all the time when I was in on Big Island. I mean, it's been a couple years, but you know, so what exactly does BISC do out there on the ground with people?

SPEAKER_00:

But so you know, if you think about invasive species, there's sort of different categories that things fall into. One is things that are just not here yet, right? And that's the cheapest ones to respond to because you're hopefully going to keep them from coming in. And that's usually the you know, a State Department, like it's coordination between the State Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity and the Department of Transportation at the airports. Um, but we support some programs at the airports and shipports where we're monitoring for some really high-profile things that are moving around. So um that's an interagency effort. So there's a lot of folks involved with that. Um, Hawaii Ant Lab is involved with that as well because they're looking for red imported fire ant. Um Department of Health's involved because they're looking for mosquitoes, and particularly for us, where they're looking for coconut rhosteros beetle, which unfortunately we've been monitoring since 2017, and we did find a CRB in a Kona airport trap this year. Um yeah, so that that monitoring does work. Uh just unfortunately, like you're kind of happy when the traps are empty all the time, but uh you know, this year we did find one. And then we also uh monitor for Japanese beetle, which is a very, very destructive insect on the mainland that attacks a lot.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, it is crops.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, it is. I I work with a horticulture person here, and yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, no, it's a bad guy. So we do monitoring for for that. So we're working a little bit in prevention, and then you know, once things slip past, the the next stage of invasive species response is early detection and rapid response. So uh we are the primary group for early detection of plants uh on the big island. So we actively look for naturalizing plants, and we got a real boost in the last couple of years with um online crowdsourcing information. So folks might be familiar with iNaturalists, where people take pictures and they upload to try and get you know some kind of identification on something new that they're seeing. And we such a huge uh database was created. You know, previously we our teams would spend, we had, you know, botanists that would spend a lot of time driving around the island, hiking, you know, different trails, like talking to people, like asking people to report stuff, because you know, you're trying to find a plant in a sea of vegetation. This island is very rural, there's vegetation everywhere. And so um, with this, you know, new technology, it's given us this huge cache of data that working with some other folks over at UH Manoa, we were able to go through that, compare that list of plants that people have reported and that have pretty high likelihood of being accurate identifications, and compare that to the current list of vascular plants that UH publishes, you know, with Bishop Museum, and and like it's really um everything that we know is is here in Hawaii and then on each island. And we found hundreds of plants that have been reported through iNaturalists that were not recorded to be in Hawaii at all, a lot of them, and and not on the island at all. So we actually at this point, we have about 400 plants. We're using the GPS data that's provided by iNaturalists, and our team goes out and searches for these plants. And at that point, um, we're we're taking a sample to make sure, like get a formal identification that that is the plant, so we can make a record for the state, and then we're assessing that to, you know, is this gonna be a really bad guy, right? Because it can take decades for plants to be noticeably impactful. And we have so many plants already that are widespread on the landscape. So we're really trying to pick what we think is gonna be the worst of the worst. And the first stage of that screening is using the Hawaii Pacific Weed Risk Assessment, which gives us a sort of a categorical score that tells us if that plant is likely to be invasive or likely to be very invasive or not, right? And so we're we're using that as our first uh, and then we're doing a lot of um really observations in the environment to see what that plant is doing and what's around it and looking, you know, is this plant invasive elsewhere in a similar kind of climate? And then the ones that we assess that, oh yeah, if we let this one take off, it's gonna be a bad guy. We actively go and try to either eradicate those or if it's already pretty widespread, because some of them have already been here a few decades, right? And so if it's already pretty widespread that we don't think that total eradication is possible, we'll do a lot of work on containment, sort of just like talking to the people in that area, making them aware they can like hopefully get it off their own properties, and then we'll have a buffer that we're out looking for that plant elsewhere. And if we find that it's starting to spread, we'll we'll get it, you know. So there's a couple different ways we're doing that. And then finally, there's um widespread invasive species, which are things everything from you know, uh rubis, uh the Himalayan raspberry, all the way to little fire ants. And those are things that people are dealing with just about every day, depending on where you live on the island. So, in in those circumstances, we provide education and support in in trying to give people the resources, very similar to what Citar does, just and we work with CTAR a lot on this, giving people the resources and the training that they need to to treat those things or control those things effectively. Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I I mean I know about iNaturalists, um, and because I've heard of other people using that. So if people a lot of times we have producers or um want to come and ask, hey, what is this plant? Is that sort of a good? I mean, I've I've used it for identifying things. Is that sort of where a good spot for them to first start to say if it's something that's new or you know, like would would that would be a good recommendation for them, you think?

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, I think if somebody thinks something is new, I they can send it directly to us. Just email us at biscuithawaii.edu or to look at it. Um, but you know, sometimes people aren't sure or they think maybe I've seen this before. I'm not sure. iNaturalists, I can tell you, um, we, you know, before we went in the direction, because there are different, you know, identification apps, um, we collaborated with some folks, uh, the uh botanists at Hawaii Invasive Species Council, and again, some folks at UH Manoa, and we looked at the different um picture apps that are out there that people can use for plants. And iNaturalist was the best for Hawaii. That's not always true in different areas. Um, there's been a few other folks who have done you know similar type of tests and and other uh, you know, other apps will actually have a better um uh score as far as getting accurate IDs. But in in Hawaii, out of the four that we tested, iNaturalist had the highest accuracy for identifying plants. And I think um just you know, anecdotally, because I I know a lot of obviously a lot of folks who are botanists and a lot of folks who are entomologists, they love going on iNaturalists and just identifying stuff as like a pastime. So um I think we're lucky in Hawaii because we have just like an enthusiastic group of people who will, for fun, just you know, even though it's their job, they'll go online and identify stuff. So yeah, you get pretty good accuracy with with using iNaturalist.

SPEAKER_01:

That's good. Yeah, because it's sometimes difficult when you get a plant, you know, and maybe it doesn't have any flower on it, there's no seed on it, and that's that gets really tough to help identify sort of what's there. And um, but I mean, yeah, this so it's good to have some of those programs to kind of weed through things, right? Literally, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Literally, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Um yeah. So I know you guys have so many programs going out there, and there's so many different invasive species that we always talk about, but um are there key ones? So I think we're talking with someone late a little bit later on in another episode on Oahu, um, and and their isk and stuff. And but are there key species or programs that you're looking at and working with currently right now with Big Island?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, there are several plant species. We are involved in the coconut rhinoceros beetle response. Um, like I said, we do education for things like little fire ant. Uh yeah, there's actually a lot of different species that we're we're working on. Um, do you want me to go in like the bug direction or the plant direction? Do you have a preference?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I mean, I it's kind of like either one, I think, realistically. Really well, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Because I mean, we I mean, we know two-line spittle bug is one of the important ones as far as our livestock producers. Um, but there are others that are, you know, plant side that also are gonna be and can be impactful to our producers. So I think, yeah, there's I mean, I feel like you could talk, we could talk. I mean, I know there's so many out there.

SPEAKER_00:

You pick Yeah, I I want to say, I want to say for insects, and there's a lot of insects on on this eye, like, you know, it's very um there there's native insects, which unfortunately several of them are endangered, right? So we have like insects that are uh very sadly are declining that that are part of the the natural ecosystem here, but there's a lot of introduced insects that have got into Hawaii. Um, the estimate is that about one new insect arrives in Hawaii every day. Um, and that's based on a study from the early 2000s. So we might have even increased that number. Now, not all of those insects are going to survive. Uh, the estimate is probably around 20 per year will actually be able to establish here in Hawaii. And whether those become invasive or not, it really just depends on do they start causing harm. So I'm gonna say that right now, probably um the the big four that I would say for the big island, of course, little fire ants, because we are the island that has widespread um little fire ant. I'm sure people on the big island are already very familiar with that. Uh, that one's not great for anybody. Uh we have an education program for that. Yeah, it's it's really um it's very it unfortunately if you live here, it's such a part of life that it becomes a regular thing that you either need to hire someone or go out there and treat it every month on your own. I would say, you know, we could talk about that one for an hour, probably people from other ISCs because they're in the middle of a response will have more to say on that. But I would say that folks um who are struggling with little fire ant should really make sure to look up the resources because timing and the type of product that you use is key. So we see people trying to come up with their own ideas. And you know, we have the Hawaii Ant Lab here in Hawaii that has researched methods just for Hawaii that go with our climate and our environment and are effective. So I would say make sure that when people are pursuing that one that they they look that up. Um, and then we have uh, of course, the the I would say our uh we have our east side bad guy and our west side bad guy um that are not found on other islands. So two-line spittle bug that is currently only found on the west side, although we did just have a small population that was found on the east side, unfortunately. Um, and then we have Queens of Longhorn Beetle, which is currently only found on the east side, right? But is slowly spreading. So those two insects are not found in any of the other Hawaiian islands yet. Um they got here somehow, so it's very possible that they can get to another island. Um, unfortunately, our you know, inner island movement of pests is is well documented. But those two, I mean, Queensland Longhorn beetle, that is a tree-boring um insect. So it will lay its eggs under the bark of the tree, and the the larva, as they're developing, they will literally girdle the tree from the inside. So underneath the bark, they will make tunnels that will cause that tree to lose its vascular system and it's not going to be able to transport water and uh nutrients. So um that one is is pretty bad. It attacks the state tree, cuckooe, preferably, like that's its favorite. Um, and also attacks cacao, which was a really hard hit to our cacao farmers, you know, especially puna chocolate, and you know, the big island was really taking a lot of these um old sugarcane fields and these agriculture areas that had been abandoned for many years, and people are diversifying and turning those areas into small agriculture, you know, just marginal. It's not it's not something where you're out there trying to make a million dollars like a big producer, but you're you're you know trying to just have a small contribution to your community and and uh your family. And um, you know, it's really unfortunate to see cacao is taking such a hard hit. Um, and there's a number of other trees that this particular insect attacks. So breadfruit, the Ulu tree, which is really important cultural tree, and also again, having this major, you know, renaissance where we have the Ulu co-op and all this work that's being done to put Ulu out in supermarkets. Um, and then um, yeah, about 30 other plants, including citrus, that this attacks. So this is this is a really bad bug. Uh, there is no information on this one. So, like I said, oh yeah, Japanese beetle. And and Shannon, you were like, oh yeah, yeah, Japanese beetle, I know that one, right? So there's some insects that are really well known that they're traveling around the world, and they're like these high profile ones that we know are we're worried about. But Queensland Longhorn Beetle wasn't on anybody's radar, no one had ever heard of it. It's this really obscure insect that's just somewhere in the forest in Queensland, Australia, and it wasn't doing anything interesting, I guess, until it got to the big island of Hawaii, yay! So now we have this horrific um insect. And we've been working with um researchers up at ARS, the Agricultural Research Uh Center up at um Peabark in Hilo, the the USTA folks at AFIS. They've been uh come up, they came up with a uh nematode, an intimopathogenogenic nematode that they collected from the environment. It was already here in Hawaii. So there's an injection procedure where rearing these nematodes and giving them out to farmers or even just to residents who have a citrus tree or something that they're noticing is affected by queens and longhorned beetle, so they can inject it into the tree and hopefully those larvae will attack, will be get attacked by the nematodes. So that's unfortunately something that that we have on the east side. And then of course, and I'm sure that your listeners would already be familiar with the two-line spittle bug, which appeared, uh kind of started appearing around the same time as as we had QLB appearing on the east side back around 2016 when we we noticed that these things were establishing, and that you know, two-line spittle bug, well known even on the mainland as being a major pasture pest. And that too is now spreading. So every year, you know, Mark Thorne and his team are out there and they're doing all the you know surveys and they're finding more and more area that that one is gaining. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah, it's it's unfortunate. And I I think that's some of the things that we work on, right? Is kind of sharing sort of how the ecology of these bugs and insects and even plants, right? Um, which we didn't really touch, but there is you want to talk a little bit maybe before we move into the next thing about some of the plants that we are also seeing um on the island that's becoming invasive and could cause harm to some of our operations here.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think particularly for pasture, the the one that we're mainly concerned about is called Chromolena Odorata, um, commonly known as devil weed. And I think that that's a reference both to the look of the leaf that looks like it has a pitchfork in the venation, but also because it's just such a horrific weed that you know it feels like it's it's from hell. It's just like a terrible plant. Um, one of the things about this one is that it's not that distinctive. It kind of looks like five other things that you see on a on a regular basis, um, which is very uh tricky when you're trying to do detection of this. And you know, my my team's been going out in Pune and and they'll be driving to a site, and then weeks into driving to the site, all of a sudden someone in the truck is like, hold up, stop, and there they find it on the side of Road in a place that they had passed many times, right? It's really it blends in, it's very difficult to find. So that's one thing about it that's terrible. But this this weed is toxic to cattle. So in other places in the Pacific where it has invaded, there have been, you know, sort of these smaller farms. So we're talking about, you know, these uh, you know, small Pacific islands where it's very, again, not large-scale agriculture, very small-scale agriculture, and so not a lot of resources. And people have just had to abandon their ranches and their farms because the the pasture will be completely overtaken and there's nothing for the um cattle to eat because this is it's a really toxic weed. So right now it's only on the east side and it's in scattered locations throughout Hilo and Pune. We do have a lot of concern that that weed could move to the west side of the island, especially in light of having two-line spittle bug, right? So two-line spittle bug is removing the grass, which is, you know, a placeholder that keeps other weeds from moving in. And then if you have this empty area, it's really easy for brush species to move in. And this is a very brushy, you know, advantageous species that's going to try and move right in. So, you know, preventing the overlap of those two species on this island is something that we're very focused on, really just like, and a lot of that comes down to um public awareness and folks paying attention and and reporting it because you know it it's these things move on their own, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And I I think you're taking us right into what the next thing I was gonna ask here is really that I mean, we really do rely on those types of things, right? The community's awareness of things um and sharing. So, what type of um, I guess, outreach or communic uh educational efforts does BIS do to be able to help share more information and you know, how can we help to get that information into the community?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, we so we do a lot of public education where we actually go into communities and we do presentations, um, and usually that's at the request. We do a regular in Pune, we do a third Saturday um invasive species talk every month. Um, and I would say we probably are at a booth or uh at doing some kind of community presentation once to twice a week minimum. So we're we're always out there. You can always come see us at pretty much any event that we can we get invited to. We we try to make sure we're there. We also have a um a lot of resources online. So bisque.org is our website. So there's a lot of resources there on these pests, and we have a YouTube channel where we have a lot of webinars and and short videos that we post. So for folks who do better just sort of researching on their own and going online, we have a lot of stuff there. Um, and we're we do a lot of targeted outreach too. So, like for instance, right now we're involved with coconut rhinoceros beetle that's that's in the Kona area, and so we do a lot of training for frontline workers that might encounter, so that would be like folks who work on golf courses, landscapers, arborists tree trimmers, but you know, anybody who would be the first in line to notice coconut rhinoceros beetle damage or you know, larvae or something will do specific trainings for them. So we we really try to think about, you know, both very narrow, like who is the audience we most need to reach, but then also very broad. Because certainly with, you know, for instance, with Devilweed, um, we we were at a booth and somebody came and picked up the little rack car that was on the booth and took it home and called us later and was like, I think we have this. We're like, okay, you know, and we get a lot of reports and people say, and we're like, okay, send us pictures, and then I get the pictures, and I'm like, oh no, like that that is correct. You did a correct identification. You have double. So like that happens sometimes where um, you know, just happen to be talking to someone in the public, and then we we get a phone call or we get a you know a text message or something. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think that's a lot of times those sometimes you think all these little rack cards don't get out, but they do, and somebody sees them, and that's exactly you know how those things get shared. But it's it's needs to have that information out there for everyone.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and we have so we have also a second website, it's called plantpono.org, and that's a statewide website, but we we manage it. Um, and that really in Hawaii, unfortunately, we don't really have any laws that are preventing the import um and the sale of invasive plants. Uh, there was one law that was put into place in 1992, it's called the Noxious Weed List. And so the Noxious Weed List, uh, very outdated because 19, I had like staff that was born after this. So um, you know, it's pretty, it's pretty outdated. And uh things that were in the horticultural trade back then, probably not trendy today, right? So we have a lot of plants that are in the horticultural trade that are moving um, you know, it's through this, through a sales type of movement. And people, we we even did a um we did a a survey a few years back um at garden centers and asking people about what you know their thoughts on purchasing and planting invasive plants. And most people, like 96%, said if they knew something was invasive, they would not buy it and plant it. But almost the same percentage had no idea that they walk in there. Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

SPEAKER_02:

I was like, they don't even know that technically most 90% of what they buy are 95 or 99 is an invasive species, technically.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and I mean it's like you know, there are not there are introduced plants that are not invasive, right? We call those pono plants. Like you can buy a plant that's pono, it doesn't have to only be a native plant or a canoe plant. You can get, you know, a lot of plants at at garden centers that that are Pono. Um, but you know, how do you know? So we we encourage people to use plantpono.org so that you can go on there and you can actually look up that plant and you can be confident that that one is not going to be invasive, right? Like night blooming jasmine is probably one of our biggest ones. People love to sell night blooming jasmine.

SPEAKER_02:

Good, I get it.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, but it's horrible on Oahu. If you go up to Mount Tantalus, taken over the whole slope of the mountain, it's terrible stuff. And and we have the same thing happening here in Kao where we're getting these uh coa forests where the whole understory, instead of there being coa regeneration, there's just night blooming jasmine filling in. So, you know, we tell people like, don't put any more of that on the landscape. But I've talked to so many people, and they when they found out, they were so sad. They were like, I've had that in my yard for like 10 years, I had no idea. I didn't know. And so I think most people don't want to do something like that where they're contributing to the landscape in in a way that's damaging. So we try to give them education. So plantpon.org, and we have a lot of rack cards. So made me think of it when you said thing about the rack cards. We have a lot of rack cards gets in, like, don't plant this. And we've had so many people triumphantly pick up these cards at an event and be like, I am gonna take this to my neighbor. Like, I, you know, they want them to rip something out and they're like, haha, like I know this is bad. So, um, you know, so yeah, that you know, that education is is really worthwhile because it gives us a chance to have even that one little moment with someone to better understand the problem.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I think we talked and touched a lot about how you know the outreach to and educational efforts go out into the community and really how that engagement and you know getting the the community involved, I think is one of the the big parts of how we start to, you know, really share about what is invasive, what is not invasive, how you can help and you know be part of that solution um for some of these species. And um, you know, Franny, thank you for joining us because I think there's there's a lot of unfortunately invasive species out there that we can we can talk about. But is there anything else you want to share with our listeners um before we close up?

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, I I think we kind of already talked about the the early detection piece before, but you know, this this island is huge, it's 4,000 square miles, right? And and my my team is under 20 people. So we really count on folks out there to pay attention to their own, just their own backyard or whatever spaces that they might have Kuleana for or that they just have affinity for, that they visit often, and to to just kilo and pay attention to what's around them so that if they um notice something that seems out of place or unusual, that's that's really how we find out a lot of the time that something new is happening on the landscape. I mean, I wish that things just popped up right in front of where our workspaces were, but that is not how it works. So I think you know that that's really important is that, you know, if folks are paying attention and and they're they're reaching out, you know, we we provide free identification. If you bring us something, a bug, an insect, you know, a plant, whatever, send us a picture. I had somebody send me a picture last year of a plastic um lizard, and he claimed, oh, it ran across the garage. And I was looking at it, I was like, I don't know, that looks really strange. But he said he's he said it ran. And I found our the reptile expert at one of the federal agencies, and he got back to me and he said it was like that's plasticus fakeus or something. And here the guy who had said it to me, it was a joke that was being played on him by so they told him, and then when they found out that he had reached out to me and that I had gone to the feds, they were so embarrassed. But you know what? I would much rather get that. We had a good laugh about it. It was so funny, but I would much rather get that kind of thing. Like you just, we I, you know, we we get something, it's weird, we take a look at it, it turns out to be fine, or it turns out to be something we already know. Just it's so much, we all have a camera in our pockets right now. Just take it out, take a picture, you know, send it to somebody.

SPEAKER_02:

It's not blurry, I'm assuming, because I was like, we know the epitomologist on staff, he gets all kinds of photos, and he's like, he's like, especially with again, like insects, right? Yeah. Dave is like, it needs to be clear, and like, you know, because like like there are very tiny differences sometimes between flies. He specializes in flies. Oh, flies. But I'm just saying, I was like, for him, he's like, no, no, no, the pictures need to be really clear, you know.

SPEAKER_00:

So yeah, we usually tell people like just take a picture and then like shove it into a jar or something and put it or a bag and put it in your fridge. And then if we need better pictures or we want to look closer, we can contact you and say, like, hey, can we get that thing? Like, yeah, didn't get a good picture, you know. But yeah, clear pictures definitely make everyone's say a lot easier. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I sometimes tell folks too, if they're doing um taking a picture something, put something else in the picture just as a reference, so you kind of have an idea of like how big it is because it makes you a little bit, little bit sometimes can help. So yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm glad to know that we can send pictures to you because sometimes I get stumped on plants and I'm like, I don't know what that is.

SPEAKER_02:

I was gonna say range ID is never, ever, ever my forte. I am very bad at it.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, and now we have uh, you know what, the compendium, the grasses in Hawaii, it's like 280 species of grasses, and it's like, oh, well, if you get down to this little point and it it has like two spikes instead of one, and you know it's like, whoa! No way, man.

unknown:

Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah. My face gets very scared and confused when people are trying to ID stuff up, like, don't ask me.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we do a lot of I I have, you know, two botanists, and I'll be like, What is this? And sometimes they're you know, there's another botanist that they're texting, you know what I mean? So these pictures make the rounds, but we try to be really committed to even if we get the picture and we can't tell what it is right away, like we find somebody, an expert, we track somebody down and force the answer out of them.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, and the networks that you build, right, across that in those different spaces is really what I lean on them for other things for our beef. Oh, yeah, everything else. So it really is really helpful. And um, so you know, creating those connections like we are today, sharing that information, I think is very important. And um, thank you very much for joining us today and um sharing about your folks' work. I think it's very important for us um being in the island community. And you know, there's so many things that come in, so helping us get educated on it to help protect our our farms and ranches and communities. We're we're grateful for your folks' work.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you so much, and th thanks for giving me the chance to chat with you guys today. Thank you so much for joining us. We're really happy to have you, Franny. We hope our listeners found this informative and that it will be useful for them.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, make sure to follow us on our social media pages, the livestock follow out, livestock extension group. If you haven't already, be sure to visit the UHT Tar Extension website and our YouTube channel listed in the show notes.

SPEAKER_02:

That's right. For additional information about this topic, for additional information about this topic, see the show notes of the podcast and the description box. Thanks for listening to the livestock follow out. 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 the next episode.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, 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.