2020-12-15 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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– we had four meetings – well five if you count the November one – but it was on their agenda for four meetings – I know many of you folks testified and gave us really good input for that and so the biggest kind of concern – the biggest idea that came out of these meetings was because \[unclear\] safety and, of course, we take safety very seriously and it’s good that we have the ability to see people, you know, and the hunter rules already have provisions where hunters have to wear – bird hunters have to wear bright orange vests and so there was a lot of discussion about how to apply that to non-hunters in the area because they only have jurisdiction over the trail itself – it wouldn’t really – our rules don’t allow us to require people – the general public – to wear orange, plus, more importantly, it wouldn’t solve the issue of people wandering in the area not wearing orange because, again, I only had jurisdiction of the trail itself – the actual… So they step foot off the trail and my rule wouldn’t apply, but I don’t have that authority anyway to dictate what people wear, so there were some really good discussions about hunting rules and how that would apply and so what came out of that was our advisory council voted at the August meeting to write a letter to the Chair of DLNR, Chair Case, the head of DOCARE, Chief Redulla and the Attorney General Connors for clarification on the blaze orange rule – does that apply just to hunters – does it apply to everybody in your GMA, we’d interpret that it applied only to hunters and so if there’s to be a change, then, you know, I suggest our game management rules would have to be changed to reflect that or the hunting rules would have to reflect that. So, anyway, the advisory council sent a letter for clarification from the higher ups on Oahu and where we’ll present it to our advisory council, of course. NP: Yeah, OK, so you haven’t heard back, but we appreciate your effort because… thank you, I was hoping there would be an answer with that by now but we appreciate your efforts because, it’s liability for the hunters when there’s hikers and bird watchers in the middle of a game management area where hunters are hunting so, ah, it would be great if they could be sure to see people easy enough. So thank you. JB: I would add to – in the interim or mitigation for all those concerned we do post on our website which is HawaiiTrails.Hawaii.gov – that we encourage people to wear bright colors and we have – many of our trails are in game management areas – I should point out - across the state. 5