2021-12-14 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

Home

a. Jerome Nickerson, District Manager of the Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation of Hawai’i Island will give us an update on issues related to the Kona Pier. Deferred as Mr. Nickerson was unable to join us. b. Peter Simmons, secretary of the Hawai’i Forest Industry Association will share forest management, concerns, and proposals. PS: OK. Thank you. Aloha everybody – a pretty nice crowd today – I’m very impressed. Well, there’s two issues that we wanted to discuss with you and \[unclear\] engage with you in \[unclear\] Hawaii Forest Industry Association – one of them is waiwi strawberry guava and the other one is feral goats. Both of those have expanded a little bit I think just recently and I think it would be good to start out with Don Bryan showing a short presentation on waiwi and then maybe we can have a discussion about that and then I’d like to move into the goat issue that may have gone into a statewide feral and wild animal discussion. But that’s all right. AA: Excuse me, Mr. Simmons – sorry for interrupting you but could you sit in this chair and then you could do your presentations. PS: OK. So Don are you ready to give a short presentation on waiwi project? DB: Good evening all. Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you about Hawaii Forest Industry Association and our project dealing with strawberry guava – I am – background – I am a forester – I’ve worked both here and on the mainland and I’m currently serving this president of Hawaii Forest Industry Association. HFIA has taken on a project that we call the healthy and productive forest industry initiative focused on a reduction of strawberry guava on this island and the reason that we are interested in this particular species with all of the Invasives that we have is just because there is just so much of it on this island. I’d like to show you a map that was prepared by DOFAW where they’re saying it is currently is this pest is present – I think most of the folks here have a pretty good idea what this stuff looks like – but it is a – one of the – before we look at everywhere that it is – I want to talk about the concept of zoning also – we are familiar with conservation zones – what we begin to focus on is that all conservation zones in this \[unclear\] strawberry guava in particular are not made the same – if you look at this map – the area that’s in red is conservation resource – what’s important about conservation resource - we’ve begun – many, many folks have begun to speak of conservation as though all conservation land was the same – it’s a – there’s a big fence around it you can’t go there – can’t use it – that was not the legislative intent or this all of this land that you see in front of you in red on the map – this is conservation resource and what the legislature said – they described the use of this land is that this land is for two purposes – generally recreation including parks, hunting and fishing, picnicking site seeing – whatever it may be – and also for commercial forestry. What has happened in the sixty years since has been that increasingly these lands have become overgrown with strawberry guava and they’re left largely inaccessible – you can’t get there from here – the roads are overgrown – the land is overgrown primarily with strawberry guava but other invasive as well and it was intended by the legislature that fishermen and hunters could use this land – at this point I think there’s very little use of it going on simply because you can’t get there and because there’s widespread belief that it’s not allowed, it’s off 2