2015-06-22 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes—June 22, 2015 mentioned so far and then we can go into detail —whatever questions people want to ask we can —and there are other DLNR folks here tonight who can answer questions but, you know, certainly, this is not the end of game mammal hunting. It's just— that's not happening —the — I think the — I appreciate Ryan's overlay of what our—what is the breakdown of the public hunting areas and, you know, there's a very, very large amount of area set aside for public hunting — but it's true that not all of it is perhaps it's not all prime public hunting. Some of it is fenced on Mauna Kea is, you know, set aside for— under court order— and there are other areas that are to be managed for protection of the native species that are on them. But the vast majority is open public hunting areas and I think of the 700 plus thousand acres three percent is fenced plus Mauna Kea. So, you know, I think, I think, so The Rain Follows the Forest framework and all that red you saw in the slide there is a reflection of a planning process to really identify the most critical native forest in order to prioritize but to think that all of that is going to be, you know, fenced anywhere in the forseeable future - it's not — and we have , we have [not speaking in mic—can't hear] we have a map just to show kind of which areas are currently planned but it's a pretty small fraction of the areas that are —even of the areas that are really top quality native forest. So that's — I wanted just to cover that— because there's a lot of land and it's a matter of— on the conservation side and the hunting side of— I think what needs to happen and what has happened to some degree and needs to happen more is prioritizing and that's where the comment about, you know, how do we sort of co-exist in these sometimes conflicting priorities and different constituents— so what we want is, you know, good hunting areas that have a good access, that have, you know, managed where, you know, where we can to optimized the hunting and we want to protect our native forest and so there's a lot land out there and as a practical matter the funding available to do all of that management is, you know, no where near what we need on anybody's count. So it's a matter of prioritizing and so The Rain Follows the Forest was a planning tool to prioritize but the actual areas, you know, designated for fencing anywhere in the near future is a small fraction of that. I want to just talk... TL: May I interrupt you just for a second on that... SC: Yeah. TL: ....issue. That question came up — Tony Sylvester in the back of the room here has a couple of questions for you later also. When we were in Kona, Chairman Aila actually was kind enough to join us at a meeting similar to this over in Kona. And the question was brought up to him —the exact question, you know, of this Rain Follows the Forest that smash of red that you see around the island — how much of that—the question was — is real? And he said, "Well, we can only do certain,"just like you just said, 10