2015-11-16 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii County Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes — November 16, 2015 • The US Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing 49 new species to be added to endangered species list — how is that gonna affect your management plan here? SF: None of those species will affect the HCP. • Is it realistic to assume that there's enough PR funds to accomplish what's listed in the HCP and then onward into game management? SF: Funding is a challenge and I don't think that anyone believes we're gonna rely solely on PR funds. We would prefer to direct PR funds to game management and there is a lot of other money out there for endangered species management so that's where we're gonna be looking to tap into — that means federal dollars would be a good source for that and state dollars as well, if we can get 'em. • When the HCP is adopted and it is in phases - when do you expect to begin the game management part of this? SF: We can begin the game management part once we obtain state board approval. We're at the point where we can put together a timeline for that. We do also need to get the approval — the incidental take permit or take approval on the federal side too, and we're working to get a firm timeline on that as well. When the board approves it on the state side — we can begin game management using state funds. Also, when the feds approve it on the federal side we can do game management using federal funds. In year one and two we can begin doing that. Hopefully, there no increments attached to the federal approval. We are trying to make sure we get an outright approval on day one— that's why we structured the implementation plan explicitly in that way. in general we are trying to do some of the avoidance and minimization measures first before we did any major population augmentation in specific areas and Kanalu Sproat and I (E. Adkins) have talked about this quite a bit trying to time things so we're not increasing. If we don't have a fence in place in a specific area we wouldn't want to increase the game populations in that area, but as fences go in, in specific areas, different management can happen. Are you wanting to bring the native plants back to pre -mammal native plants count? SF: No. There's two parts to that question. DLNR — part of DLNR's mission with regard to endangered species is to recover those endangered species so in terms of the public trust that is a broad goal that we have. That is not the goal of the HCR The goal of the HCPs are much narrower with regard to the plants so Edith skipped a lot of the details 'cause they're