2015-06-22 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes—June 22, 2015 least get the idea that maybe there is an issue to be resolved, I would hope. I know maybe some folks think, ah, we're doing fine for—we're in this great successful phase of increasing preservation areas and all of that — it's a big win for Hawaii but for hunters and even — I'm not getting into it here — but even for fishermen sometimes it excludes a portion of people that are interested in conservation as well so I hope we can get that out of that. My presentation today— I want to make a little disclaimer out of it first — I did it under guise that I'm not a commissioner yet because I just got sworn in at 4:00 today so —and I originally wanted to call it "The End of Public Game Mammal Hunting on the Big Island of Hawaii," but I thought let's be a little bit more positive and let's talk about the future of what we're gonna do today. But honestly, I do feel on the path that we are on —we will see and end to public game mammal hunting on this island. And also that the islands are very different. We go to the Legislature and we see the differences between islands and you're not going to find generally folks from the other islands as adamant as people on the Big Island. It seems the hunters on the Big Island are more effected by the move of preservation in Hawaii and I'm hoping that we can at least get that out and get— at least some kind of consensus on that so... Here we go... My name is Ryan Kohatsu. Most of you guys know me but I'm basically, I'm an engineer. I used to work in energy efficiency before on the green side of things so I've always wanted to do both things. So in the sense of I'm a hunter but I also like bird watching. I also plant native plants before. Maybe not so much in the DLNR side, but I've done it with private entities and stuff. So I have an interest on both sides and I'm just hoping that I can come at this from a more neutral stance but yes, I'll be more on the hunting side just because I think it's a little bit more neglected. So just [unclear]. So why are we even here is a question I wanted to ask because if we don't think that all of these faces here and all these people show up just for fun then we can just sit around a camp fire and talk story. We're not gonna get anything done, anything useful. So I think maybe that you're here because we know that we have an issue. What it is — I hope we can get to that—whatever it is — but the typical thing we always hear when we go to Legislature —we're in the public—from people that maybe don't hunt here or not— or don't like hunting —we hear the thing of Big Island we have like over 700,000 acres to publically hunt and my presentation is geared to our public game mammals — as the title says — I forgot to mention that— it just seems like we're not— game birds aren't as effective right now, so I'm just going to strictly talk about mammals at this point. So they say we have over 700,000 acres of public land to hunt and 714,000 to be exact— as the picture shows — all the red areas are all the public hunting areas that doesn't have private or anything like that and that's — I'm not talking about private today. And the other thing is what are the hunters even complaining about. Anybody that doesn't live here can just drive up Saddle Road, look on the side of the road in Hawaiian Homelands and see all of those sheep that are depicted in the picture and 3