2020-01-14 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – January 14, 2020 KS: In the short time I’ve been here, I mean, we’re not doing a population estimate for those animals in the short time that I’ve been here we’ve probably seen in the last couple of years an increase just because our staffing has decreased – so we’ve spent less time trapping than we wanted to – so we – I had a couple guys that were trapping pretty consistently and then I lost them and so I just got one guy about a year ago so we started it up again, um, so probably in the last year or two – and I can’t say it has gone up – but we haven’t been trapping as much so you would assume that those numbers have gone up a little bit, um, but we are trapping again. NP: Right. Thank you. Well, we’ve got to keep moving on. Thank you so much Brian, um, so I have a little slide show just to give everybody a visuals on the areas we’re talking about. And it will just take a moment and Nora’s gonna help me. OK. This is a visual on the areas we’re talking about. This is Kaohe – I had the pleasure of getting invited on a bird hunting trip and, um, so I took pictures – bird hunters in the field... OK. This is a good picture of the overgrown grasses that the hunters are having to traverse, um, going up clear to their chests without the goats and sheep to graze ‘em. OK. I took a picture of this because, um, I do admit I noticed that there are pigs in the Kaohe GMA and critical habitat and I noticed that the pigs are making nests under the mamane trees – this is a trunk of a mamane – and what I noticed about it was that there actually, in my opinion, weeding around the mamane. Here’s another sample of where the pigs have been sleeping and I noticed that, um, everywhere where they’ve been sleeping is popolo berry – right there – you see it to the right – they’re not native – they’re indigenous and they have herbal value. I’ve never seen more beautiful popolo berry than where the pigs are nesting. And here’s a picture of a mamane tree – they’re very beautiful up there – they were all blooming and they look healthy and great and I, you know, I just, you know the reason why the palila are continuing to decline – it’s one of the things we’d really like to know – what is it since the sheep are, um, for the most part non-existent in critical palila habitat. And right here is the picture of pig manure and the reason I took this picture is because, you know, things are dry up there. I picked it up it up and I looked through the pig manure and it’s all grass. They’re eating – primarily they’ve turned into grazers. Their manure looks just like cow pies and, um, so they are helping the grass situation. I had more slides but somehow I didn’t get ‘em up, but anyway that’s a visual on what we’re talking about in the Kaohe GMA critical habitat. Thank you. OLD BUSINESS NP: All right so now we’re go on to Old Business. I would like to confirm committees with the commissioners real quickly, um, so we have a Government Relationship and Legislative Committee. And on that I have Stanley Mendes, Grayson and Abraham confirmed and myself. 35