2021-12-14 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

Home

TS: I will, thank you… AA: Thanks… TS: Thanks, guys… AA: Next… MC: Ah, Mark Crivello here AA: Go ahead, Mark… MC: I really like the idea of taking away the invasive waiwi problem that we have. I really like you guys thoughts and ideas about it. Is this something – as time goes on – we could do an animal management to help keep invasive out and help our plants to grow and with this animal management in these kind of areas too it would also be great for hunters and just keeping the place in check. PS: Peter Simmons, hi, Mark, ah, yeah, I mean, everything I know would tell me you need to have management of both the land and the critters – if you’re gonna have the best place you can so having a good quality management program would be critical. MC: Yeah, and I can see that being a big help to stop these invasive plants from regenerating and help our native forests in a lot of ways – so I thank you guys for thinking of this idea you guys have going and I would really love to see it in action. PS: Thank you, Mark. DB: This is Don Bryan, if I might answer some of the points that came up earlier – they’re good concerns and they all need to be addressed, first is ownership – who owns this land – and the answer is in rough numbers, just a little over half of it is State of Hawaii and then going down by acreage – next is the federal government – so between the federal government and state is 2/3rds government land then it comes to Kamehameha Schools and then all of the other – there’s 70 or 80 landowners that – it gets smaller and smaller – the other thing I would like to – just paint a little picture of what it looks like in mid-slope – we don’t need to see that very much, you know, because there’s just no way to get there – but a lot of this land – if you take a look at it from the air – what you see is the strawberry guava is moving up the hill and its overtaking Ohia/koa forests. Those Ohia/koa forests are still there but there is a great deal of dead and dying koa on those lands – you can see the dead tops easily, as you fly back and forth and see it from the air and the idea is to remove the strawberry guava, where strawberry guava has become the over story and has suppressed everything else. Take that out and when you do that – when you open bare soil there is almost always a lot koa seed and koa will come back on its own – if it doesn’t it can be replanted – and so it isn’t a matter of starting with the – in those lands – it’s not a matter of starting so much with what we see in our lower elevations everyday as we drive around – where it’s just a single species of nothing else but impenetrable waiwi – but it is a suppression of the native forest in action – and the concern that another weed will come along – I’m sure that’s true – I’m sure that’s evidently true – what we see right now is it’s going to be all weeds without human intervention. The native – our facts that matter, I’m 7