2021-12-14 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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thing right over this period of time this is not an easy thing but it is in front of us – if we don’t do anything then what’s the consequences of doing nothing? Well, I guess you write off a quarter of the Island. It’s a pretty black and white issue on this thing, oh, and I want to tell you, I had a career at Kamehameha Schools – I talked to one of my colleagues today and I said, how come you never looked at those lands in particular as conservation resource lands. We just looked at them as conservation “don’t go” “can’t do anything there” “we can’t go” “do nothing.” How wrong we were… All these years, yeah… Even sugar – when sugar was there – maybe they had it as forestry because they could then - in the early days – maybe use some of the wood – I don’t know but some of the area was used for tea – growing tea and coffee – mostly coffee – before 1929. But, anyway, it’s a public resource – a lot of it – a lot is private – and it’s there to be used for those purposes – and I think that and that we have a way, a mechanism right now of doing good – and paying for it at the same time – that is reconstructing maybe a canopy of those Ohia/koa forests and if you look at those lands – that’s where you have a lot of rot in those lands, you got fire ants in those lands, I mean, those lands are rough lands and they’re not gonna get in any better shape unless somebody starts doing something. TS: I have a question; this is Tony Sylvester. AA: Go ahead Tony… TS: OK, first of all we’re talking about 600,000 acres of waiwi and as Stan said how much of this is actually public land – that is accessible – or will be accessible in any time within the next 20 years – and also the double edged sword of accessibility is one of the greatest threats to our native forest because as these roads and things get cut in there other diseases, other plants and species advance into the roads and into the forest and that’s been proven in a lot of areas and there’s a lot of scientific data to prove that as well so you can all look that up and I guess my primary question is that there’s two things, there’s no value to the waiwi – I think some people could argue that there’s some value – to say that there’s no value when people eat it, people make jams and people do things with these things to say that there’s no value is one dimensional – also on the agenda is the area Kaupakuea by Pepeekeo – we tried ten years ago to get access in there – and that’s also an area where they planted tsugi pine and some other species and there’s some waiwi and stuff in there and there’s a state parcel back in there – and that’s a county issue and they would not budge on that – they allowed a subdivision to be built in there with fabulous homes and there’s a drop off right off the edge of the road and that’s all they gave us – there’s no place to even park to even access anywhere up there and the county basically told us to go pound sand – that they weren’t going to do anything about it - so I said I see what you guys are attempting to try to do – but as a hunter and as a resident of this island for five generations – I see this as just an assault to get rid of the waiwi because that’s a prime food source for our pigs, while there are so many other threats to the forest right now, a lot of these low lying areas you talk about with fire ants and all this stuff and rot and everything – you’re totally wasting time and effort to try be reforesting areas like that – I think that’s why a lot of the other resource users around the island worked at higher elevation or you’re out of this zone that you guys are trying to work in – you could say this is my opinion but I think the facts is there – once you displace something, something else is gonna fill in and native species take too long to grow and you gotta removing waiwi you’re gonna get some other plant that’s gonna grow in there and cause this curse that’s taking over everywhere, some brush, some pests – so I think you guys got to be a little more open as far as the actual plan of what you guys are trying to do cause all this land is mixed use and once the animals are gone it’s not mixed use… 5