In the spirit of tradition, Hawaii Wildfire set-up a poster presentation for this year's Nahelehele Dry Forest Symposium at the King Kamehameha Hotel in Kailua-Kona on February 27th.
Many great speakers gave presentations at this year's symposium. We certainly noticed a common theme throughout the presentations: wildfire. Nearly every presentation mentioned wildfire as a severe threat to dry forest preserves. To highlight the wildfire issue, our partner and Wildfire Extension Specialist, Clay Trauernicht from University of Hawaii, College of Tropical and Human Resources, gave an animated and exciting presentation to the crowd of nearly 150 people ranging from researchers to land manager to interested community members.
This year, our poster board, designed by Pablo Beimler and written by Mr. Beimler, Elizabeth Pickett, and Ilene Grossman, emphasized the importance of collecting agency and community input before moving forward on wildfire mitigation projects. Here's an abstract from the poster board:
"Addressing the wildfire issues that persist on the Hawaiian Islands requires collaboration and communication among diverse parties due to the cross-field, cross-jurisdictional nature of wildfires. For years, Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization has been a model for thoroughly engaging its partners and community members in each step of the collaboration process. One of the key reasons HWMO’s projects have been relevant and successful is that the organization only moves forward on projects that are directly driven by stakeholder’s needs. HWMO makes every effort to collect input from land managers, planners, County/State/Federal agencies, local communities, and any other parties affected by wildfire in order to truly understand what is needed on-the-ground. Our display visually highlights the plethora of input we have gathered from the past couple of years, primarily through the Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) process."
Banner photo: Hawaii Wildfire's poster board showcasing word clouds of community input.