2021-12-14 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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waiwi and I thought his goats might help with the waiwi and he helped me understand that that wasn’t going to happen efficiently and I talked to Darcy Nobriga – he does goat work – you guys probably know Darcy – but anyway – what occurred to me was that a lot of the people who have a lot of wisdom and smarts about animals haven’t been in the discussion about the animals – ranchers – I came from a ranch – foresters – you guys – it’s not penetrating to where it needs to penetrate to make a difference to health of the animals as well as for the general community. So, anyway, I wrote this letter and I got lots of help – Mark Crivello helped me on the first draft – it was too hot – too angry – so I backed off of that one – but eventually the letter – I was working with David Tarnas on another matter – Act 90 – I don’t know if you’re familiar with that – a leasehold issue for DLNR – and I mentioned the goat issue just as – hey, can we do something about the goat issue and he said, yeah and I said, you know, I got a letter and he said please send it – so I sent him the letter – I think I sent a copy to Stanley Mendes… SM: Um-hum… PS: And, um, basically his response was this is very timely, of course, the deer issue’s on Maui and so forth, he said, he’s been talking to other legislators about the management of feral and wild mammals and his tack right now is to maybe create a task force on each island to try to tackle some of the game management issues. I’m not a politician – there’s no bill that’s been written – no resolution or nothing – but he said – and he seemed very aware of the issues – now I don’t pretend to be – I’m just trying to organize the thing and I see an opportunity here. I talked to the Cattleman’s Association cause I have an affiliate – I just got a personal relationship with them – and they’re keen on helping the issue from their point of view and so I’m kind of as a coordinator guy right now trying to show folks that maybe collectively we could do better by the animals and by our communities and for ourselves with the circumstances that we have right now – not only goats – all of the animals. I know what starving animals look like – I know what they eat and I’m not proud of being part of a community that abides by that – I’m not proud of a community that doesn’t manage its animals – that’s not the way we should be – you guys know that… So what I’m kind of mentioning here – the reason I’m here with this issue is that, yes, people in Kona and Kohala have an issue with goats but the state has an issue and it’s been elevated a little bit because of David Tarnas – the state has an issue with its mammals and the laws are kind of weird – you guys probably know that wherever the animal stands – that’s who owns the animal and at the same time the state law and cruelty to animals doesn’t allow you to starve an animal on your property. That’s against the law. There’s just so many things conflicting – and it’s so complicated that we’ve made it so we can’t act efficiently – not only we’ve got accidents, you know, running into a pig on the Old Saddle Road was no holiday – but for people that are driving in Kona now running into a goat seems to be like a normal occurrence – pretty regularly and so I’m here because I want to suggest that through David Tarnas your help is needed to help with what your game management and the fact that the state hasn’t ponied up for God knows how many years or is broke or however it is – that’s not – I mean, that’s an excuse but that’s not legal. OK. I did talk to an attorney, I’m not saying this is a final at all – but I did talk to an attorney over a different issue – I said, you know, this is the state law that we should be doing this and so forth and they tell us that they don’t have the money for it – he said that doesn’t matter – it’s a state law. You don’t get the break – if you look at it as a handicapped access issue just cause you don’t have money doesn’t mean you don’t put it in – you get sued. Well, you know, I’m just suggesting that this has gotten to the point now where it’s affecting a much bigger part of the society then it quite often does – cause most of the time starving animals die in the forest… 21