ʻĀina
Momona
Planning for and protecting abundant lands from wildfire
UHELP convenes fireshed partnerships that bring together large landowners and communities to reduce wildfire risk where it threatens homes, infrastructure, agricultural lands, and natural and cultural resources.
ʻĀina momona — rich, fertile, and abundant lands are under threat from wildfire. Fireshed partnerships are the key to landscape-level management.
Many people are reducing wildfire risk in communities and individual properties, but few efforts coordinate across ownership boundaries at the regional level.
The University of Hawaiʻi Ecosystems and Landcare Program addresses this gap by convening fireshed partnerships that bring together large landowners and communities to reduce wildfire risk where it threatens homes, infrastructure, agricultural lands, and natural and cultural resources.
Assessing wildfire risk
We map wildfire hazards, evaluate existing mitigation efforts, and identify gaps in vegetation management, access, and water resources across fire-prone landscapes surrounding Hawaiʻi's most vulnerable communities, prioritizing the protection of homes, critical infrastructure, and natural and cultural resources.
Developing regional mitigation plans
Working with landowners and fire responders, we identify and prioritize projects such as fuel breaks, greenbreaks, water infrastructure, road and fence improvements, and vegetation management, while outlining project costs and compliance requirements.
Building fireshed partnerships
We build upon existing networks and convene large public and private landowners, government agencies, conservation organizations, agricultural producers, community groups, and fire responders to align priorities, coordinate investments, and implement the highest-value wildfire mitigation projects.
The dry side.
Hawaiʻi’s wildfire problem concentrates in the arid and dry leeward zones — the same ground where fallow pasture carries continuous introduced grass. Fireshed partnerships work here.
Moisture zones after Price, Jacobi et al. 2012 (USGS OFR 2012-1192). Basemap © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Plan it, or look it up.
Planning happens in a dedicated tool with your landowners and fire responders. The vegetation-control methods live with the extension programme and are open to anyone — partnership or not.
Plan a fireshed
The landowner-facing planning environment — mapping hazards, access, water, infrastructure, and treatment placement across a fireshed at scale.
fireshed.ecosystemsandlandcare.org →Vegetation control
Methods for controlling the introduced grasses and shrubs that carry fire — mechanical, chemical, biological and cultural, with protocols, materials and safety notes. Shared with the extension programme, since the same weeds are both a fuel problem and a restoration problem.
Browse control methods →What this means for you.
Participating landowners and emergency responders receive a coordinated assessment of wildfire hazards, fuels, and infrastructure needs across the broader landscape.
This planning identifies high-priority, implementation-ready projects, strengthens coordination among neighboring landowners, and helps position partners to leverage funding and build on existing wildfire mitigation efforts.
Fire follows the grass.
Hawaiʻi’s fire problem is largely a fuel problem. Fallow agricultural land carries continuous stands of introduced grasses that cure, ignite readily, and carry fire into places that never evolved with it.
Which is what ties this program to the other two: the species we manage against are the fuel, and the native seed that lets burned ground come back to something other than more grass is Moku Māhuahua.
UHELP, Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, College of Tropical Agriculture & Human Resilience
mchimera@hawaii.eduDepartment of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, College of Tropical Agriculture & Human Resilience
trauerni@hawaii.eduDepartment of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, College of Tropical Agriculture & Human Resilience
arearl@hawaii.edu