Over the past decade, an average of 1,000 wildfires burned 17,000 acres each year in Hawaiʻi with the percentage of total land area burned comparable to and often exceeding figures for the fire-prone western United States. Over 98% of all wildfires in Hawaii are from human-caused ignitions and the introduction of non-native fire-prone grasses and shrubs seen mostly on abandoned agricultural lands. It is these non-native grasses and shrubs that dominate burned areas and maintain a ‘grass-fire-cycle’. Wildfire risk remains a persistent threat to Hawaiʻi’s residential and natural wildland areas.

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Non-native grasslands and shrublands now cover nearly one quarter of Hawaiʻi’s total land area (1 million acres) and together with a warming, drying climate and a year-round fire season, this greatly increases the incidence of larger fires, especially in leeward areas.

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A key strategy to break this grass-fire cycle and reduce the risk of future fires is to restore and revegetate post-burn environments. From this perspective, every fire actually provides a potential opportunity to replace fire-prone grasses and shrubs with species that are less prone to burning, less sensitive to drought, less invasive, etc. Native aalii, for example, and other fast growing species are good "workhorses" for both post-burn recovery and native reforestation.