2021-12-14 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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PS: Peter Simmons, yeah, you probably know maybe more than I do about Roads in Limbo – the County and State don’t want to own them – and they point to each other to say we don’t own them they’re in limbo – they’re undecided who owns them roads – and a lot of those are your more back part of the plantation roads up in that way – so in terms of – like Don said – in order to peel this apart and say, OK, access – let’s look at one area – how are we gonna get here – what’s the road situation – what easements do we need and all of that – each one’s gonna be different – and a lot of this stuff literally is finger pointing cause nobody wants to maintain ‘em… BL: We’re going through the issue right now – there’s places like go hunt with goats that when the fire came through now we’ve got this second generation tobacco tree that has taken over the roads and nobody’s clearing the roads and, you know, we’re losing the access cause they’re waiting too long so I was wondering if there’s somebody’s supposed to be taking care of that and who should it be and if there’s a budget for it – where is that money going to if it’s not being… PS: I’m not a government guy… BL: \[Unclear\] if you had any ideas and my second question was you were saying that this land was supposed to be planted for commercial use – was that the Department of Forestry that was supposed to be doing that and how come they never… PS: Just as an example, Peter Simmons, when you watch TV and you see the Governor or the Lt. Governor or the Senators in their offices – nice koa – you notice that – I’m sure – where do you think that came from? Largely from Hilo Forest Reserve, Laupahoehoe section – it was supposed to be studied as a restoration and rejuvenation project so that was gonna be going on forever up there but in 1974 when the Endangered Species Act was passed and a bunch of other kind of federal mandates kind of came through the harvesting on the Island stopped – I think it was around 4 million board feet a year at the time – the year before – and I think it was down to 800,000 after that and it kind of tiered down as it went – so basically, the easier money was coming from Washington D.C. in the form of matches for saving endangered species and you guys know, I mean, at one time hunting was a much higher priority for DOFAW than it’s become and we’ve been told recently that, you know, that commercial forestry is probably the lowest priority that they have but, that’s probably why I see us as kind overlapping our interests. We want to promote the hunters, we want to see that as a healthy ecosystem and then we see that if we’re fortunate enough to be at all successful and see an improved landscape – that’s not for me, I mean, I’d like to see it but I’ll probably be dead by then. BL: But like I said, we’re gonna cross a lot of dropped balls and we’re trying to figure out who dropped the balls so we can politely ask them to pick the ball and kind of run with it like they were supposed to. PS: Well, Peter Simmons, you know, one of the things I liked about the hardest, the hard questions here is that we need ‘em. What I hope is that you guys will say yeah – those are our forests too – we want ‘em to be healthy too and whatever way you want to describe them – and the generations to come are not leaving – there’s no exit strategy – so how are we gonna cooperate to make it right – and we’re here at an early, early stage really talking about in 9