Guinea grass and the Maui fires

Guinea grass (Urochloa maxima) is a nonnative invasive grass in Hawaiʻi. It forms dense stands that outcompete native plants, and it carries very high loads of fine fuel. Those fuel loads greatly increase fire potential, spread, and severity.

Scientists had long warned that Hawaiʻi’s cover of nonnative grasses and shrubs was kindling waiting to burn. The Smithsonian’s reporting on how swaths of invasive grass made Maui’s fires so devastating explains the mechanism: former plantation land, left fallow, filled with grasses that cure in dry months and ignite easily.