2021-09-19 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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JBF: Yeah… BL: ….and I see the wind thing and cattle are a game animal – I’ve hunted up in the water thing with the state and I was seeing more ohia damage in the preserve area than I was in Hawai’i an Homelands with all the cattle and like was brought up – Puuwaawaa – we’ve got every game animal there living and co-exist and I have pictures of the cows and everything and very little rapid ohia death and like I said the fire that we had a couple years ago decimated the forest on the makai side – there used to be a healthy population of goats there – no RODs – the fire came through and what the bulldozers didn’t kill or the fire burned down, you know, got… AA: Sorry, Brian… BL: Sorry… Sure… AA: Ah, JB you want to touch up on that real quick we gotta move forward… Yeah, as far as the – I just wanted say – the first samples that I took, too, I saw these trees dying – I was convinced 2012 there’s something wrong – but I didn’t get any new pathogens. We were finding the same old pathogens – it wasn’t it – so when a tree dies there’s a lot of different fungus – you know the first guys to die of COVID or AIDs they didn’t know what was going on and you know we weren’t that many people working on it until I hired someone we had exactly zero forest pathologists in there, but, yeah, we could have picked up the disease a year or two earlier. I don’t know if it would have been in time – looking back at aerial images it was pretty widespread before anybody really started noticing it was out of the ordinary. But definitely the local people picked up on something before I did – I’ll give you that one. Oh, if game animals, oh, I just – do people hunt hem, I mean, is it on the list of game when you get your hunting license – the rules and regulations – it doesn’t include cattle. I just mean legally; I don’t mean whether you eat ‘em or not. So thank you for the opportunity to talk – let me say that, you know, we’re in COVID lockdown still, blah, blah, blah. I can meet with small groups – if any one of the groups around the islands wants to have a meeting – I’ve met with different groups around the picnic table in the park – whatever, if you want a follow-up discussion – I’m happy to come around and talk with anybody. I’ve had discussion with different hunt groups in different places around the Island about what we’re seeing and Rapid Ohia Death in general so let me know, um, JBFriday@Hawaii.edu – I’d be happy to come around and talk. AA: OK. Thanks, J.B. KS: Hey, this is Kanalu. Can I ask just one quick question? AA: Ah, got to be real quick Kanalu… 25