Hawaii alert Non-native grasses 'raised risk of fires'

Scientists and academics say they have been warning for several years that invasive grasses covering a quarter of the Hawaii islands are a major fire risk.

- Sophie Kevany

Untamed grassland helped fuel the spread and intensity of the deadly fires on the island of Maui, according to experts. The fires, which broke out on 8 August, have killed more than 100 people and destroyed the island's historic town of Lahaina.

Hawaii's last sugarcane mill, which was fed by a 14,570 hectare-plantation on Maui, closed in 2016. "The lands around Lahaina were all sugarcane from the 1860s to the late 1990s. Nothing's been done since then - hence the problem with invasive grasses and fire risk," said Clay Trauernicht, an ecosystems and fire specialist at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa.

Asked if the non-native grasses made the Maui fire worse, Trauernicht said that any form of "land use or land care would have made the situation safer", given that the grasses were "completely left unmanaged".