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by hparadiz
1044 days ago
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The area on fire is a magnitude larger than all the land the sugar plantations ever took up. There was never any development of that land. Not today. Not ever. It's been designated a natural preserve much like 99.9% of all the jungle areas. |
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2,000 acres burned in the maui fire. In contrast, Alexander and Baldwin sold 41,000 acres of sugar plantation land in 2018.
Here's a map of the Maui fires (red dots) overlayed on sugar lands. https://imgur.com/CysWreb, https://health.hawaii.gov/epo/egis/sugarcane/
From NYT: “The fire problem,” he added, “is mostly attributable to the vast extents of nonnative grasslands left unmanaged by large landowners.”
That shift away from plantations allowed tropical grasslands to grow untended, which built up the fuels needed for big wildfires to spread. Mr. Trauernicht, a specialist in wildland fire science and management at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, refers to a “grass-fire” cycle.
This happens when the heavy rains that fall across the islands cause the grasses to grow. Then the dry season arrives, and the grasses burn.
“The biomass out there is off the charts,” Mr. Trauernicht said in a 2021 interview.
There are ways that the authorities can limit this destructive cycle, he said. They include building firebreaks, introducing vegetation that is more resistant to fire and allowing livestock to keep grasses at a manageable level. For years, Mr. Trauernicht and other experts have been calling for such moves to mitigate Hawaii’s wildfire risks."
And: "I talked to Clay Trauernicht, one of Hawaii’s top wildfire experts. His assessment: The plantations of sugarcane and pineapple that dominated the state's economy during much of the 19th and 20th centuries are mostly gone. Their disappearance, and Hawaii's heavy rains, allowed tropical grasslands to grow rapidly, replacing them. But then the dry season comes, and the grasses burn, causing destruction like we’re seeing on Maui.