The 3.5-acre Laukahi Slopes Mini Park in the middle of a Waiʻalae Iki neighborhood on Oʻahu is hilly and overgrown with trees, bushes and grass — a fire risk.
Earlier this month, the City and County of Honolulu park was closed temporarily and surrounded by an electric fence.
About 100 sheep and goats were let loose inside. The “flerd,” a flock of sheep and a herd of goats, was brought to eat as much of the vegetation as possible.
“Goats tend to eat higher and more woody, stem-y stuff, whereas sheep will eat closer to the ground, and they eat a lot more like shrubs and bushes and all the grasses,” said Raia Olsen, who owns the animals.
Olsen and her husband run Oʻahu Grazers, a family operation that offers prescribed grazing services.
This prescribed grazing is meant to clear out the vegetation before it gets dry and flammable later in the summer — a real concern for those who live nearby.
Using animals at the park is the latest effort by the Waiʻalae Iki community to protect itself from potential wildfires.
The city does some maintenance at the park to keep the vegetation in check, but it hasn’t been enough, so the neighbors have taken up that task themselves.
Elizabeth Kiefer, who lives next to the park, has helped lead that effort. She’s the chair for the neighborhood’s Firewise USA group, a national program that helps communities prepare for and reduce the risk of wildfires.
“Our community adopted the park about a year ago, and as part of that contract, we can take care of the park and we can manage it and do things to it,” Kiefer said. “The first thing we did as a Firewise community is try to cut down some of the flammable hale koa trees and cut down some of the vegetation, but that didn’t really make a dent.”
She also said that the uneven terrain makes it difficult for the city to properly manage the shrubs and grasses.
Kiefer was inspired to explore prescribed grazing during a meeting with other local Firewise chapters. There are dozens of neighborhood groups in the state.
“I learned that a neighborhood on the Big Island used sheep and goats to maintain and take down the fire risk in an unmaintained part of their neighborhood, and I just Googled to find out if there was a grazing company on Oʻahu. And that’s how I met Raia,” she said.
Firewise provided a grant to the neighborhood group, which it used to bring in the Olsens.
The project is, in practice, much like the others Oʻahu Grazers has done, but it did get the attention of some neighbors. When the first batch of sheep was let into the park, about a dozen people watched from the sidewalk.
Most of the company’s prescribed grazing jobs are at solar farms and far from people, making this relatively residential project unique.
The presence of people has been the cause of some concern for those involved.
“We would like to make a faster impact and get out instead of having them here for too long. We also run the risk of neighborhood dogs and predators, and also those two-legged sticky-fingered predators who like to steal stuff,” Olsen said. “We have that all the time, so it makes us nervous being right in the middle of the community.”
But it also represents an opportunity to expand the use of animals for fire mitigation. If the project is successful, it could show that prescribed grazing in more populated areas can be a viable option for those who want to reduce the risk of wildfires.
That includes the city, as this is the first time it’s using prescribed grazing at a city park.
The practice has several benefits over other forms of vegetation management and fire risk reduction.
The animals not only remove plants that can become flammable, but also fertilize and break down the soil. That allows the soil to better retain water, which helps reduce the risk of wildfires.
Prescribed grazing could also be cost-effective. Some Waiʻalae Iki residents mentioned that a neighbor was quoted $10,000 for the construction of a fire break, although some estimate that they could cost even more.
Although it’s too early to know for certain, a project like the one in Waiʻalae Iki could be closer to half of that. It also seems to have the support of residents.
Nearby neighbors Matt Elliot and his family were among those watching as the first group of sheep was let into the park.
“I think, especially knowing how the climate is changing so much, to have this environmentally friendly way of addressing the issue and do it in a way that’s just so creative and different is really cool. And to have a 5-year-old son, this is amazing — like the best thing that could happen,” he said.
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