2021-01-19 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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appropriate stocking rate of cattle – there’ve been only 3 acres worth of fires – cost us about $10,000 to control those fires whereas in all the other areas there’s been about 25,000 that have burned and a million dollars in cost for us to fight those fires. That’s a 1% of the cost in the areas where we have appropriate stocking rates of cattle. So ungulates obviously are still a threat to those endangered plants and to the natural system on a whole – and so the way we found on mitigating for that is to fence as much of the high quality forest as we can and propose approximately 8,000 acres of fences – much of that has already been built and within those fences remove all ungulates – there’s about 80% of the known endangered plants are found within there and then we would mitigate for any of the plants outside of the fences that we would consider taken inside the fences and then finally, I mean, pretty simple within the fences also control for the spread of invasive weeds using manual control. Now getting to the can you have your cake and eat it too? We have a very convincing, in my opinion, case study of ungulates protecting the native system by grazing and keeping fuel loads down but outside of those fences that are proposed like I said – there’s 75,000 acres of highly degraded land that we are already considering anything outside of those fences taken and lost anyways. And so that’s where the question is. Can you have your cake? Can you protect the native systems while also providing a perpetual and sustainable hunting program of species that are a threat to that system? Unfortunately, there are no easy answers and it is something that we are working on internally as an agency and we will continue to hopefully make progress towards finding an answer to that question. Mahalo Nui. If you have any questions you can contact me from my email at the beginning of the presentation. A hui hou. AA: Do any of our members have questions for Kanalu? SM: Stanley from District 1. So when you talk about you fencing the areas where get the most endangered stuff and trees – so the acres where don’t have – that’s where – basically is where we going be able to hunt and the game be in that areas? KS: So when the plan was first put together, you know, twenty years ago and everybody meeting together – yes, that is the idea that they’re going to fence a small portion of the area with the highest quality forest – remove 6