2023_11_21 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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AA: OK. Thanks. JPC: Yeah. Game bird season, \[unclear\] Mauna Kea is having good success for Mondays from what I’ve \[unclear\] people I’ve talked to. On the game bird side also, we have our game bird breeding project which we’re still in. We have about 75 ring necked pheasants, a dozen or so blue pheasants, 2 dozen chukars, and then that’s – those are birds that we’re raising to release in public hunting areas, we also are partnering with a private group that they have birds that they’re raising for us to release into public hunting areas so about 200 or so birds between a mixture of pheasants and chukars that we’ll release in public hunting areas. They probably won’t be ready to release during this season so we’ll probably release them – this is mostly just to restock hunting areas, restock breeding population which is mostly why we’re probably gonna release them outside of season so that they don’t get shot and we can let them propagate. After our West Hawaii program – they just released yesterday 180 chukars on the upper Mauna Kea \[unclear\] area and they partner with Kohala High School Agriculture program. Our program we partner with Keaau High School Agriculture program to rear and release birds \[unclear\] school kids. Ah, we’re ramping up our program for next year – we built a new flight pen up on Mauna Kea at the behind Gilbert Kahele Recreation Area on our state parcel, we’re planning to keep birds next year to hopefully get eggs and incubate and hatch more eggs then we can be more self-sustaining, bird breeding program within the state so we don’t have to bring in chicks from the mainland which can be difficult, the chicks – it’s hard on them flight trying to be more sustainable and it’ll be – it will probably be in the long \[unclear\] for us to \[unclear\] chicks on our own \[unclear\]. Little bit more input but a self-sustaining program so… Um, other news for Kapapala – not much movement on the land – the transfer as, ah, you guys may know the ranch is being – the ranch leases are being transferred from DLNR to Department of Ag – that was approved I believe in August meeting – the next steps would be surveying the boundary to help with the eventual executive order, and then we’d work with the ranch \[unclear\] cattle and stuff in the forest reserve, um, Kapapala is ongoing habitat management for game birds, in the ranch heating up to game bird season, road maintenance will make it easier for the hunters to get through cause there’s a lot of \[unclear\] choke out a lot of roads so we’ve been doing a lot of road maintenance leading up to game bird season. Um, \[unclear\] statewide all the different branches within DOFAW we’re going through a statewide rules changes for mammal rules, bird rules and we’re also trying to get game management area rules written out, a lot of the rule changes are – a big portion of them are all just word smithing to make the rules easier to understand, if we have any difficulty understanding them then the public can also – it can be difficult for them so they’ve – it’s a lot of cleaning up – cleaning house, trying to write rules to help hunters gaining access to areas – being efficient – and then also fire so that our enforcement people are more efficient in enforcing rules but making it easier for everyone to understand \[unclear\] so, that’s that for rules. We also wanted to talk a little bit about some potential fence projects, specifically ones that will affect this group which are \[unclear\] fences that aren’t really being implemented yet but they’re being talked about within the state, state system, two of which are Piha at buffer zone. Upper Piha, and south side of buffer zone going up on the left between upper Army, upper Army and south boundary road, it’s an area of public hunting – the public hunting area but it’s being sought to be fenced because it’s – right now it’s fenced on 3 sides and we’ll just take one more fence so, it’s a strategic fence I know that GMAC – my suggestion – I know that GMAC will not be in support – a bit or collectively wouldn’t be in support of it – so it would be to write and we talked about writing letters – that would be my suggestion to voice GMAC’s position or anyone’s opinion would be to write a letter to write 16