2021-09-19 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

Home

JBF: And again, I would pass on the actual management of Puuwaawaa but I will point out that we’ve seen no Rapid Ohia Death at Puuwaawaa. And I want to point out that the issue is more – the issue is complicated like any disease – what I think happens at Puuwaawaa is that any injuries in the trees dry out before they get infected. So it’s encouraging to me that at Puuwaawaa we know the pathogen is there, we’ve detected it all the way down to Waikoloa beach but we haven’t covered any disease in Puuwaawaa even though most of Puuwaawaa is open for grazing and hunting. ?: And most of Puuwaawaa has every single animal you can think of… JBF: Yeah, yeah… But it’s in a dry environment and I think that is what is saving that forest. Ocean View – we see some disease – there’s a saw mill in Ocean View that cuts up ohia and blows sawdust all over the place and, you don’t see that much disease in Ocean View. Whereas, like that first picture I showed you – they just wiped out the forest in, you know, thousands of acres in Puna. So I’m just saying it’s complicated. We only discovered this disease 6 years ago – really learning a lot – but this is something that is a pattern that we’ve seen repeatedly across the Island. AA: Abraham – District 5. I’m a lifelong Puna resident and I seen when the pictures that you showed is right next to Leilani Estates and Brian Ley lives and when this virus first came along – the first question is – why did the state take so long to get involved with it because I heard, you know, there was some of the community was actually taking samples themselves and taking them to the university and they was actually getting turned away in the beginning until things really got out of hand and then now the state want to come in which is good but kind of late – it’s similar to the coqui frogs. What takes the state so long to act on these real invasive species? JBF: The big difference between this and the coqui frogs is we knew what coqui frogs were. We knew what little fire ants were. Now we could have stopped on that. We could have stopped on coqui frogs. I want to point out – this is a new disease – these fungi – this species that are hitting ohia – were not known to science before we figured out what they were – so this was a disease that nobody knew what it was and it was very much an unknown. Yeah, we could have jumped on it earlier, I mean, we could have made better decisions sooner. Nobody turned people away – but you’re absolutely right – it was the community members who lived in the forest who brought it to people’s attention. It wasn’t general survey of forest, you know, I mean, the first time I had a community member talk to me about it I saw a couple trees dying and there’s always a couple of trees dying, you know, the background level of mortality – there is a background level – but he was right and I was wrong. He said, no, this looks like a new thing. I didn’t believe him at first and so I could’ve been faster on the pick-up – my colleagues could have been faster on the pick-up – but especially because that area and I don’t want to imply that it started in Leilani but I will say people in that in lower Puna were the first people to bring it up to our attention and that’s absolutely true. 20