HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-11-19 GMAC Meeting Minutes DRAFTGame Management Advisory Commission
County of Hawai’i
Minutes
Meeting Date: November 19, 2024
Time: 9:00 am to 11:00 pm
Place: Zoom and In-Person 25 Aupuni Ctr., Ste #1501, Hilo HI
Aloha everyone – thank you guys for joining us today. The meeting of the Game
Management Advisory Commission will now come to order today, Tuesday, November
19, 2024, at 9:00am. This meeting is being held at the Puna Conference Room, at the
County building in Hilo and on Zoom. Today we have our Deputy Corporation Counsel
Miss Inha Kandatsu-Kang. Mahalo. Some housekeeping rules: please make sure your cell
phones are turned off or on silent mode so all of us attending here in person – please
remember to speak into the microphone when speaking today – statements can be
recorded. Under the Sunshine Law, GMAC may remove any person who willfully
disrupts the meeting or prevents and compromises the conduct of our meeting. For
people who want to submit testimony – for those in person if you’d like to submit
testimony, please fill out the public statement registration form. To those on Zoom, if
you’d like to testify on any of the agenda items, please provide your name and identify
which items you’d like to testify in the Chat. Something special we do is we take
questions if they pertain to what we’re talking about on the agenda so if you have any
questions from the public for those on Zoom you may drop your questions in the Chat, if
you’re here in person please write it on top of the yellow piece of paper we have on the
desk. We may or may not ask or answer your questions – at the discretion of the Chair.
Moving on to take roll call of the Commissioners,
1. CALL TO ORDER/ROLL CALL:
District 1 - Robert Duerr, Present, in person
District 2 – Taysen Wong Chong, present, in person
District 3 – Rhon Leomana Turalde, Present, in person
District 4 – Brian Ley – Present, in person
District 5 - Vacant
District 6 – Vacant
District 7 – Vacant
District 8 – Cortney Okumura – Present via Zoom
District 9 – Justin Ackerman – Present via Zoom
Quorum Established with 6 in attendance.
STAFF: Inha Kandatsu-Kang Deputy Attorney, Corporation Counsel – in person
Barbara Kossow, Administrative Specialist – via Zoom
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2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES: September 17, 2024
Action: A motion to approve the minutest of September 17, 2024 was made
by R. Duerr and seconded by L. Turalde. The motion passed unanimously by
voice vote with 6 ayes.
3. STATEMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC ON AGENDA ITEMS:
LT: All in favor, the meeting minutes of the last – September passes, thank you. Moving on
to agenda item number 3 – Statements from the Public on agenda items. Do we have
anyone from the public here that would like to make any statements on our agenda
items? Oh, yes ma’am?
JK: My name is Jenn Kagiwada, I’m Council Member for District – 2, right here in Hilo, just
been wanting to come and attend one of your meetings because I’m very interested in
the work that you’re doing here and to hear what your discussing and I’m very
interested in this particular item. I’ve got a lot of constituent calls about the feral pigs,
everything in my district – animals coming into people’s yards – people worried about
animals on the roads so it’s kind of dangerous so – I just wanted to check in and hear
what you guys are discussing. I am looking at – I’ve been trying to discuss some simple
things like just, um, do not feed the, you know, pigs in a couple key spots in my district –
where we see people actually feeding the, um, the wild ungulates on a regular basis,
um, just to try to, I guess, bring a little awareness to people around the issue, but, um,
would love to stay and hear this presentation and hear all your discussions so thank you
very much and that’s all for today.
LT: Thank you, ma’am. Are you talking about at the inter-section?
JK: There’s the Komohana and \[unclear\] intersection and also by the little bridge on
Waianuenue \[Unclear\] seeing pigs over there.
LT: Yeah, I saw some pop up right by the airport, um, small airport by \[unclear\] and all over
the area, yeah. All right, thank you. No other statements. Moving on to Commissioners
Report by District agenda item number 4 - Mr. Duerr, District – 1, sir?
4. COMMISSIONER REPORT BY DISTRICT:
a. Each Commissioner will provide updates and share concerns about their respective
districts; Commissioners to decide on whether to add those topics at the next meeting
and to invite the public to provide testimonies and presentations at their meeting. Other
than voting to add it onto the next agenda, no discussion or voting on the item.
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RD: Hi, District – 1. As a Commissioner on my own – I submitted letters to the General Plan,
stating that there was no inclusion for the harvesting of wild fish and game and
providing access for those activities as well as gathering cultural practitioners. It was, it
was a short letter in the time had come up so I, I put it in as a District – 1 Commissioner.
I did the same thing with Kahuku. Kahuku National Park is seeking public input on their
new mauka and makai national park which is – I’m not sure – 50,000 but maybe as much
as 100,000 un – and in that testimony I just said that to provide access for camping and
to consider hunters, fishers, and other gatherers and cultural practitioners. Wailoa
dredging – Wailoa River dredging is just about done, evidently they went over budget
but they’re doing some kokua, finish up – they should be done by Thanksgiving. The
state also is, is doing ancillary projects they’ve been delayed on so,I would say that
Senator Lorraine Inouye is a major factor for pushing this through and the other thing
too is that as a, as a Commissioner I saw that the DOFAW was doing a game bird crop
collection and included that as an item that’s on our website so that if people check our
website they may be able to find the game bird crop collection, which seemingly would
be a valuable pool for game birds. That’s all I have.
LT: Thank you District – 1. Did you by any chance see that the dredging company flipped
their boat. You saw that?
RD: Ah, yeah, I did. I actually had a report of that, you know, the fellow who was on site,
they flipped it, they recovered it. They, they – those guys were not on site at the time, I
guess it was the weekend. They flipped it, recovered it, and then they brought in
another boat from Oahu.
LT: Yeah, cause I was driving past and I saw the boat – it was connected to the dredging
boat upside down and only the, the manu \[sp?\] was sticking out the, ah, yeah, the whole
wall – what about the EIS statement on that thing? Whether they flipped the boat and
dredged it, um, and then even for the went over budget – I was at the meeting last
month – was it last month? And they said they’re – they went over budget but they’re
starting an annual reoccurring dredging fund – I don’t know if you heard anything about
that?
RD: No, Chair, that’s a very good thing to follow up on. And then also follow-up on – well
with the total cost of this project and then what was the cost per cubic yard taken out,
and then, um, Mike Tokunaga of Tokunaga Fishing Store also was mentioning that the
debris, you know, a lot of the debris from the storms are, are piling up. He’s concerned
that, that was his finds its way back into the water and then silting. So, he was asking,
he’s got a call into Parks and Rec to try to take out the bagasse, and the debris on the
shore to try to prevent that.
LT: OK. That’s all for District – 1. Thank you very much, sir. Ah, District – 2, Mr. \[unclear\].
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TWC: All right. District – 2 \[unclear\]. I am in the work still with – for the – \[unclear\]. I’ve been
working with KED for spread Lili’o’kalani\] Gardens regarding the feral cat and feces and
any problem that the feral cats impact on Nene. I did have a small – known as a public
meeting, right, we just offered a few DOFAW officers recently with Abraham – it’s in the
public member – community member, um, this is in regards to Unit H fence, yeah, we’re
pretty much – gonna be drafting up a basically something that’s better than fencing, you
know, anything \[unclear\] our discussion was , you know, the problem over there is to –
the impact of the birds. There’s no fence that can hold back mosquito, so we’ve got to
resolve something on that. They are willing to work, and possibly open up, the old upper
forest reserve over Waiakea.
Alongside Stainback that leads to the, I believe it’s Torch tree replanting, and possibly I
did mention to them and we’re still in talks of that, but, it’s really up in the air I just
figured I’d throw out there since we are losing hunting areas for rifle, maybe possibly
cause the numbers are low with archery hunting in Mauna Loa to maybe make it and on
and off season for rifle as well access on Mauna Loa, and, also I got one more thing – I
was speaking with how Makahanaloa – the public access with regards to county
jurisdiction as well being down there, ah, I was talking with \[unclear\] Makahanaloa
Fishing Association president and if we do \[unclear\] discussions next Monday, be willing
to come in person – DOFAW, KED this week, yeah…
LT: Right on, \[unclear\], thank you. OK. So, going back to the on and off rifle season on
Mauna Loa – any, any unit, any hunting unit in particular you see that happening with –
that’s the easiest or, what, what is – how are your ideas on that?
TWC: Well, we didn’t get into detail with that – we just – I asked for like how often hunters
are going up there – they said the most they’ve seen in a long time was six in a weekend
and it’s just all archery, right?
LT: Yeah.
TWC: Ah, I not going count Mauna Kea at this point because it’s like, you know, we’ve been
banned that for a long time, yes, see coming here there once in a while but, you know,
the – we basically losing that, right, we lost a slice recently – basically Kapapala Ranch is
on edge right now – so we don’t know how much longer we’re going to have that I don’t
know the whole situation like who’s going to be taking over that but if we lose those
areas that’s a big impact on the \[unclear\] so why not try and mitigate something into
possibly maybe a half season for rifle on Mauna Loa. Because my experience is a, you
know, \[unclear\] on Mauna Loa as well. Not everybody’s willing to take that walk as an
archery hunter, so, you know, maybe give some ground for the \[unclear\] walkers, you
know?
LT: Yeah, sounds good. Cause I only hunt go up there anyway…
TWC: Yeah.
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LT: Yeah. OK. Right on, thank you, moving on to District number 3. OK. District – 3, that’s
me. A short update on District – 3. I’ve been talking to the mayoral candidates, we only
got our mayor this past two weeks and so, we’re still at a standstill. Maybe Miss Jen can
update us about the sewage plant down in Keaukaha in the back. I know that ag
property of \[unclear\] started going out so in the back of the airport. Miss Lorraine
Inouye was talking about the state land back there and she came into the Hawaiian
Homes meeting and the Keaukaha meeting the last couple months talking about the
land being disbursed and I think this past month there are 10 people who got
agricultural lots in Keaukaha in the back of the airport – I think 15 acres. So that’s the big
one in the back happening with the construction going on, and that’s the last of our
fishing village – the closer area to the breakfall, is suffering from all the pollution this
past couple years – another thing is in Keaau that this wintertime the pigs are coming
back up everywhere, on the side of the stretch – Panaewa Stretch – at the intersection –
for myself, I’ve counted maybe four in the last week – ran over – road kill, and District –
3, basically the same, so not too much changing for us in District – 3.
LT: OK. We can move to District – 4, update, please sir, thank you.
BL: All right, District – 4, Brian Ley. Ah, one positive thing in \[unclear\] Ian Cole when
Abraham talked the last meeting the lower Puna lanes between HPP and Hawaiian
Beaches – they were looking at the DLNR is making it a potential special hunting unit,
ah, no idea, but they had \[unclear\] only firearms or what they’re saying it’s just you
know \[unclear\] looking at opening that up so hopefully we’ll have a new hunting area
and that will relieve some of the pressure of the surrounding communities since we
keep it \[unclear\] anti-gun politicians we’re gonna keep having a pig problem in HPP and
Puna and, word on the launch ramp, we were supposed to get started on that – the
elections are over and Pohoiki Launch Ramp is disappeared again into the ethers which
I’m sure will come back in about a year and a half which we will get some more things
but this we’re gonna fix it and we’re gonna do it. And the birds on Mauna Kea this year
is just horrible \[unclear\] something from the DLNR – why I would see more birds in June
and all the water is being broken and now when the hunting season’s open that – there
are no birds anywhere. Since the last couple times – the best day we’ve had is we’ve
seen sixteen birds and that’s counting birds running around Parker Ranch and stuff so
it’s, it’s just a dismal year up on Mauna Kea, and, the places that I have seen birds I’m
also seeing sheep so, there is a little correlation on there where we have the sheep
keeping the grass down – that we seem to see little birds – more bird activity where I
see sheep activity so, that’s something to be qualified, they’re up there – they – God
knows how much money they spent on the new rat traps – I’ve yet to see a dead rat
under one of the new CO2 things but pigs and other things will predate on them but
then one of these days I’ll see a rat, so, they spent a lot of money on that and they’ve
gone up there and mowed down a bunch of mamani trees and stuff and – I got the
impression this year they cleaned up after themselves – they didn’t chop it all up and
leave it on the side of R1 when they have been doing for fire hazards – so they are
cleaning that out so, and that’s is for it’s, you know, keep electing the same we’re gonna
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keep getting the same, so, more pigs, no fish, and everything else so that’s it for a report
for District – 4. Thank you.
LT: Amen for that. Thank you very much, sir. Birds and sheep correlation – I like that.
Moving on to District – 8, number 8, Miss Cortney Okamura.
CO: Aloha everyone.
LT: Aloha.
CO: Aloha. OK. One update at the Honokohau Harbor there was a group that got together
and successfully removed and relocated eleven years’ worth of coral growth from a
decommissioned fish farm located at the harbor, um, so it was a collaboration between
DAR, DLNR, Nature Conservancy and Arizona State University and Blue Ocean
Mariculture. So they were able to remove and rescue all this coral, um, larger coral
heads went to different reefs while the smaller fragments were placed in the eco-coral
restoration nursery, ah, which is, um, the one that’s located there at the Host Park, so
anyway, that was a great, ah, collaboration and rescued a bunch of coral and all of the
new stuff will be out-planted once it spent some time in the nursery. A good, nice,
happy story. And then there’s going to be a restoration volunteer day at Puuwaawaa.
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They’re hosting a volunteer day at their Hauaina Restoration Unit on November 30
from 8:00a – 12:00p. If anyone is interested. I’ll send the information over to Barbara
and have her send that out to everyone. And that’s all for my district.
LT: Thank you very much.
CO: Thank you.
LT: All right, now moving forward, last is you, sir, thank you very much.
JA: Aloha, good morning. Ah, for District – 9, I’m just back from five weeks on the East
Coast, so not too much to report. While I was gone I did miss a Waikoloa Range update
– I’m still waiting to hear back from Mr. Glennon Gingo on what transpired in that range
meeting, which is the first in a couple of years. So hopefully, we’ll get some updates
from him and see where we can move forward with hopefully some movement with the
range. I know that’s near and dear to everyone’s heart and hopefully, the Island can get
an update on that and hopefully, we can seem something with that – so – that’s the
biggest thing with that, and, that’s all I’ve got.
LT: Thank you, sir, welcome back. Mahalo. All right, that’s it for our Commissioner Reports
by District – our district updates. Moving forward to our next agenda item. Number 5 –
Presentation. Ah, 5a. Dr. John Tomeček.
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5. PRESENTATION:
a. Dr. John Tomeček, President of the Texas Chapter of the Wildlife Society. He conducts
research and outreach on issues of wildlife damage and emerging issues related to the
management of feral swine and their associated damage and disease challenges –
presenting “Wild Pig Problem in Hawai’i”.
JT: Well, aloha, good morning, thank you for having me today.
LT: Aloha. We’re gonna give you – we’re gonna give you presentation time. I’d just like to
read this off and introduce you. We have presentation by Dr. John Tomecek, President
of the Texas Chapter of the Wildlife Society. He conducts research and outreach on
issues of wildlife damage and emerging issues related to the management of feral swine
and their associated damage and disease challenges – presenting “Wild Pig Problem in
Hawaii.”
JT: Thank you very much. Thank you. Ah, just a couple of quick corrections – so I’m the past
president of the Texas chapter of Wildlife Society, I, I, cycled off a few years ago. Ah, but
I’m the current chair of the National Wild Pig Task Force and then also serving various
capacities for the, the state and federal government advising on pig issues, so, I, I always
says I never wanted to work this much on pigs but it seems to be a needful item and so
here we are. So, I’m gonna try to share – got a quick PowerPoint but I’m gonna be brief
with my PowerPoint and mostly talk and have some pictures and some bullets to look
at. You can ignore the PowerPoint if you want to and just listen to me – it’s up to you,
ah, so I want to talk a little bit, you know, some people say wild pigs, some say feral
swine, where I’m from we say feral hogs but it’s all the same animal, right? Ah, in, in
Hawaii you’ve got the descendants of pigs that were brought by voyagers from
Polynesian, you’ve also got the descendants of pigs that were brought by Anglos later,
ah, in Texas we’ve – it’s different in that we have pigs that were brought by the Spanish
in the 1500s and then pigs that were brought by the Anglos in the 1800s and so it’s a
little bit of a mix of things. I’m gonna talk about some general issues that are common to
pig problems no matter where we are and things that are on the horizon and then
plenty of time for Q & A from all of you – questions about pig management – what’s
coming up on the horizon and however I can be helpful to you, and the things I like to
talk about are things that are common to all of us and you’re going to forgive me
because my photos are all from Texas because I work primarily in Texas. Our ecosystems
are diverse here but we don’t have near here the kind of rainfall that you have in Hawaii
so we go from swampy country to sub-tropical country to deserts and mountains and,
and it just really depends but the unifying factor is that we have pigs everywhere and in
the old days people used to say, well, pigs can’t live on the western side of the state
because it’s too dry there – but we found that, that’s not true because we make the
landscape good for animal agriculture, we spread water everywhere – but for us – water
is life – water is the unifying factor that we all work under and the thing that I think it’s
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important to remember for everybody is that pigs have a need for water, especially in
warmer climates and although I consider Hawaii in the summer as a very nice
comfortable climate because at home it’s 110 degrees and Hawaii has the ocean to keep
you nice and comfortable. Pigs, when it gets to be warm – they don’t do very well. The
thing that I have to remind everyone is pigs – the wild animal that we bred domestic
pigs from – whether that’s pigs from Southeast Asia or whether that’s pigs from western
Europe – those animals perform best in cold climates – they evolved in cold climates –
so they don’t shed heat very well at all, so they need the water to cool down – they
need to drink a lot of it – they need to bathe in a lot of it and so we see a lot of damage
to our ponds, our streams, our rivers – we see a lot of erosion – we see a lot of riparian
vegetation, but probably one of the bigger issues we run into aside from the damage to
those plants is we see a lot of contamination in the water. In every place I’ve worked
we’ve seen fecal coliforms, E. coli go off the charts in the water, sometimes bad enough
that they EPA comes in and they say this watershed is unsafe to be in, it’s unsafe for
recreation, it’s unsafe for animals and the EPA comes in and closes it down and says you
can’t be here. It’s a very real problem that we face from pigs. Aside from that is you’ll
know in, in Hawaii you fight invasive plants all the time – that is one of the things I’ve
learned the times I’ve been lucky enough to be in your state is that invasive plants are a
common problem that our two homelands share – so, for us we have a lot of invasive
plants that were brought in over the years either because people wanted to produce
whatever the fruit or the nut was from them, or they wanted to have some ornamental
and the ornamental plant went crazy. What we see from pigs is this – typically we see an
increase in these undesirable invasive species for one of two reasons – either because
the pigs don’t eat the seed or the nut from them but they happen to – the trees happen
to grow around water. If they happen to grow around water where the pigs are
wallowing around to stay cool – the pigs will actually pick the seeds up in the mud
against their body and then they walk away and the mud dries - you have a clump of
wet mud with a seed in the middle of it and I can’t think of a better way to spread those
plants and in many cases those plants evolved with the pigs in Europe and Asia and
they’re designed to be spread by pigs – we just brought the pigs and the plants to a new
place. We see those things increase. We also though see a decrease and a lot for us it’s
our mass producing trees, you know, our oaks species – the things that produce these
nuts – a high food value – a high nutrition value – anything that’s gonna produce nuts
and so we see those decline but more importantly we never see these native plants get
to go to seed and grow new seedlings and take off because there might not be a native
animal that goes and eats that seed out or they don’t eat very many, but the pigs not
being native – they can get in and eat all of the seed out from the ground – they eat the
seedlings of those trees so we see a decrease in our native plants that we also struggle
to keep around. We fight invasives and many of our ecosystems it’s tough to find a
native plant anymore, whether that’s grass and weeds or trees, and we do see for a lot
of our trees that might be of some kind of economic value – you’ll see what you have in
this photo here – where pigs rub against them to get parasites off of them or whatever
else they need to do – get the mud off – and they end up girdling that tree and killing it.
And we have a number of native trees that are fairly sensitive in their bark – not thick
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bark – and so it doesn’t take very long for the pigs to kill those trees. On the wildlife side
I don’t think anybody is more impacted by, by loss of native wildlife than Hawaii is – but
we see a lot of the issues with pigs being directly predatory on wildlife – especially any
birds that nest on the ground and this is one of the things that we struggle with – in
many of our coastal areas a lot of our birds that are endangered or they’re threatened
are ground nesting birds and so this, this game camera photo I always like to bring up
and I show it to students and I’ve learned over the last few years I have to start asking if
they were born before 2005 or not because the photo may be older than they are,
right? So this was an early game camera photo when we got the first digital game
cameras we put them out – and this was a nest of a wild turkey and this an example for
all of our ground nesting birds – the turkey was evolved with native nest predators,
various things: snakes, racoons, possums will come in and eat an egg or two. But it’s
hard to find that nest and there’s a lot of eggs and so that turkey is able to raise a clutch
and that’s how the system evolved and works. But the problem with pigs is what their
sense of smell they can find those nests quite easily once they learn what that smell is
one time – they’ll find it again and they don’t eat an egg or two – they would eat the
entire nest. And we had times in the past on studies with cameras watching these
ground nesting bird nests – whether it was turkeys or prairie chickens which for us are
critically endangered or a number of other birds – you would see the pig come in – eat
the hen on the nest so kill her and eat her – eat all of the eggs – and then whatever the
plant it was that the nest was built in turned that plant over and eat the roots out from
under it to get all of that nutrition and then move on and just destroy the landscape. So
we see predation, we see critical habitat, we see a lot of resource competition but one
thing I’m gonna harp on a lot in the next few minutes is disease issues. So, as the years
have gone on we – it’s classic issues of livestock diseases or human diseases – but we’ve
seen an increase in disease transmission from pigs to native wildlife. We’ve also seen
issues of pigs being able to pick up diseases that traditionally we thought were
restricted to wildlife. And I, I’ll talk about that in just a couple of slides – some of the
things that are newest on the horizon for us, but, I always refer to pigs as the gift that
keeps on giving because it seems like every year we have some new problem that we
didn’t know about and it’s not that there’s anything wrong with having a pig – it’s that
because we have these free roaming, wild populations that we can’t keep under control
they’re able to spread diseases – they’re able to have all of these impacts that we simply
can’t, can’t take care of and I think it’s important also to remember – how did we get
pigs in our home area? How did you get pigs? They were brought with the intention of
being farmed and raised and free ranged and then collected up at times to make food
and for us – that system is broken many years ago and those animals were just let to
roam. You have an advantage in being an island state in that for us, we are the cause of
most of the pig problems on the mainland U.S. People come to Texas, they load pigs on
to a trailer and they drive them to other states. I’ve noticed, Mr. Ackerman you said you
just got back from the East Coast – we had a time where -I think it was two years ago –
somebody took a load of pigs from Texas and drove them all the way to Pennsylvania
and let them out. The USDA has such a detailed genetics archive now that when pigs
pop up somewhere they come in and remove them – they can usually tell what county
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they came out of and so in our case they were able to identify what county in Texas they
came from. So we have this issue of pigs being moved around to areas that don’t have
them and creating these ecological problems. But one thing that is common is when you
have a system where people enjoy hunting the pigs – by enjoying hunting the pigs in
Texas they’ve been in some areas for 400 years and it’s part of the culture. It is not as
long a part of the culture as things are in Hawaii, for sure, but I always ask the question,
how many hundreds of years do they need to be there before they are a part of the
culture and a part of the lifestyle. And so it’s tough to discuss managing the numbers we
have in the context of making sure the traditional use of the pigs is till maintained. So
one thing that I like to talk about when we talk about moving pigs around and we talk
about incentivizing pigs and what not, in, in Texas we, we feed wildlife. Like it’s going
out of style or like it’s something new, so, these kind of corn feeders are ubiquitous
across the landscape, every pig knows what corn is. And the example that I would give
here is so much so that they’ll pull the feeders over – and this is a sow feeding her
piglets and some adult pigs, for us this is something we were curious about years ago
about how do the pigs work with these food resources that are constantly out there so
we had a study, we put GPS collars on pigs and we watched their movements and then
we experimentally turned off feeders and once a feeder was off for a week or ten days
they would quite visiting that spot. There’s not a cheap easy meal – they moved on to
something else. Availability of food on the landscape as well as the availability of water
can move and change their behaviors. And this is something you’ll know when you have
food that’s coming up seasonally, but those animals will react to it, so we had to be
conscious about – if we’re putting food on the landscape – how are we making sure that
we’re keeping the pigs out of it. So, when I talk about impacts, and I apologize, I’ve got a
few graphic photos, I try to minimize it – when I talk about impacts and I talk about
agriculture – animal agriculture in Texas is sheep and goats and cattle for the most part
– most of its rangeland operation, grazing operations and this photo is an old photo –
this is from the late 1970s because pigs really blew up in Texas in, in areas other than
the eastern part of our state – where they’ve been for hundreds of years. They blew up
in the 90s and early 2000s. This is a photo from the late 70s of an angora kid goat that
was killed by a pig and the reason that I had it in here – was that it was historic at the
time – the, the goat raiser saw it – shot the pig and took these photos and man it went
around everywhere – today the kids would say it went viral, right? Because in this time
it was unheard of – it was a new thing and it was hard to kind of wrap people’s brains
around damage from these animals in a predatory way, but we do see a lot of predation
on native wildlife but we also see a lot of predation on livestock. Lambs and kids for sure
– we see increasingly a lot of damage to adult goats and adult sheep – not really on
cattle, right? Pigs and cattle, you don’t see direct predation, but one thing we really
started looking out on the cattle side and, cattle grazing in Hawaii, cattle grazing in
Texas are not all that dissimilar in the acreages you’re working in – when we have cattle
in pens and they’re being fed, we see if you’re feeding them in the evening time – cattle
are up in the pens – the pigs come to the pens at night, just like that corn feeder where
they’ve learned food will be there – last weekend I was with a graduate student on a
ranch sitting on the pipe rail of a pen – calves are in – we stopped counting at 250 pigs
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that came into the pens and as soon as they come in – they don’t attack the calves – the
calves know – they get out of the way and they go stand along the fence – and they let
the pigs eat all of their food. And so the bigger discussion is not necessarily that they’re
damaging the cattle – they’re really not – but the cattle are easy to manipulate and we
see decreased rates of weight gain – the feed’s just not getting to the cattle – we see
decreased health of those cattle – most of it due to pigs. We’ve really seen an uptick in
livestock diseases from pigs in the last several years and it’s a variety of things, pseudo
rabies, ah, foot rot, ah, swine brucellosis and a number of different things. Anthrax is
native in our part of the world so I want to emphasize that it’s an issue that we face, ah,
and it’s a seasonal thing and it’s always been here but, pigs are interesting in that they
evolved with Anthrax so they, they can get Anthrax but they don’t die from it, it’s a,
again, strange thing. But the economics of it, you know, it’s startling, we don’t
understand everything that’s going on in terms of losses to livestock operations – in
Texas we know it’s somewhere in the ballpark of 95 million dollars a year that they’re
doing in damages to livestock. The damages to agriculture are total in Texas every year
is like 500 million a year and it’s, it’s just a staggering number. The point is it’s very real
and it’s hard to find someone that hasn’t experienced that. When we talk about crops –
Hawaii’s crops are very different – your crop production systems are different in many
ways – one thing that I always like to talk about is when you have a crop that’s an
annual versus a perennial – if I’ve got a perineal crop that increases its value or
productivity every year – that damage that we see from pigs to those crops is startling
and the one I talk about here all the time is hay. We’ve seen a significant decrease in
folks producing hay even out of long, well established pastures – just because the
damage to the land and they get sick or remediating it – they get sick of the damage to
emblements trying to produce it. So it’s not always with pigs the direct damage that you
see – sometimes it’s the kind of creeping loss over time where folks just don’t engage in
those enterprises anymore – they can’t stay in business with a crop that they used to
farm – so they have to switch to something less valuable, less desirable, but it’s the only
thing that the pigs won’t eat. And so it’s something that I like to talk about also when
you’re in a, a produce producing region – all right, that’s kind of a strange said – produce
producing – we, we grow a fair amount of produce in Texas as well – not like you guys
do – it’s, it’s incredible what you can produce. But for us we have green production so
artichokes, lettuce, spinach, you name it we have citrus production, we have melon
production and one of the problems we’ve run into in recent years is pigs getting into
those areas or into the water that’s used to irrigate them and we see e-coli
contamination. So, you have a single farmer that has e-coli make it out of there and
make it into the food chain, hopefully, it gets caught before anybody gets sick but it’s
the, the death sentence for the farmer’s farm. There’s no way that anybody’s gonna
want to do business or buy from them again because their produce is contaminated and
it’s – when you do the chemistry back it’s pig e-coli. So, one thing on the property side
I’m just gonna hit quickly, I always tell people, if I knew how much turf grass was worth I
might have gone into a different industry and not wildlife because I never knew how
much golf course were worth, but the damage to property is one that creeps up and I’ll
say it’s funny for us many years ago, our legislature didn’t want to do anything in terms
11
of helping financially to manage pigs until a golf course in the capitol got rooted up
during the legislative session and then they were all very unhappy when they couldn’t
go and play golf and so, they all wanted to say, OK, well what are you doing about this,
well, some money would be nice, but, yeah, and so the, the impacts to properties are
very real, but the thing I really think about more these days and I want to harp on this as
the growing for us is human health and safety issues – so, for us, we’ve got – with pigs
it’s a little over 20 diseases that they carry that we, we know of actively and about a
dozen of them are zoonotic so you and I can catch them – and these diseases include
swine brucellosis, tuberculosis, anthrax, foot and mouth disease, salmonella, there is a
swine variant of hepatitis and, and here’s the one thing I don’t know and I need to check
is how many of these diseases actually exist in Hawaii and which diseases you don’t
have because you’ve been able to stay isolated on the Island, which could be a saving
grace, but many of these are, are quite damaging especially to older people and some of
them are lethal if not treated like the swine variant of hepatitis will cause liver and
kidney failure within ten days or two weeks, if not treated, and we have a few people
every year that die from them just from exposure but increasingly the thing I really
worry about is kids – so I have to have my photo of the kid here looking at the pig
through the fence. The thing I worry about is not direct exposure like this kid – but we
have a lot of areas where we have sports fields, community gardens – things like that
where pigs are coming in and they’re present and then they’re defecating on the
landscape and we’ve got little ones that are out there playing. We had a public health
issue several years ago now where there is a community soccer field, you know, little
kids soccer they’re teaching and there’s a little boy over there that was eating
something and the coach had to go see what it was and he was just filling his mouth pig
poop. I don’t understand, I still don’t understand but it happened and so the parents
concern what could he have been exposed to, right? The doctors are calling the health
department saying what might he have been exposed to – what do we need to do to
treat him – and the solution is simply if the pigs weren’t there this wouldn’t be a
problem. So, I want to point out some of the emerging wild pig issues that we’re dealing
with and some of these are global issues – you get a lot of insulation being where you
are, and, in this way when we deal with things from the old world even, north and south
America get insulation just being not physically connected to Europe and Asia, but one
of the things that we’re facing that’s coming in the future is African swine fever and this
is an old slide here from the last twenty-teens – Europe was facing this in 2016 – 2017
where for commercial pig operations they were killing hundreds of thousands of pigs
that got this disease – so what it is, it’s a hemorrhagic disease so it’s similar to Ebola, it’s
similar to Anthrax and that these animals bleed to death and it’s, it’s not pleasant and
it’s graphic, ah, it’s really quite a shame. It comes out of Africa originally like the name
suggests and it evolved there with African wart hogs – they don’t succumb to the
disease – they can tolerate it and it’s carried by ticks and a few other bugs – but now
you have pig to pig contact and this stuff, as far as we know is 100% lethal to the kind of
swine that we deal with that are all descended from wild boars. The problem is how it
moves around – so as you might imagine – you can get it from infected domestic or wild
pigs but the bigger thing we’ve seen in terms of moving it is people moving it on
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contaminated vehicles, equipment, shoes, as well as food waste – so much so that it’s a
growing concern that it will probably come into the mainland US on an international
flight with somebody who has a food product that wasn’t caught in security screening
or, or their person somewhere. And despite the diligence that we have tracking those
things, it’s always possible. The concern is this and it’s been expressed in Texas as well –
because these pigs are desired cultural activity hunting these pigs – it will kill all of the
pigs when it gets here and so that will be an impact on traditional users as well as
recreationalists – there will be ancillary benefit in the loss of damages but the problem
is this disease – once it gets established – the pig to pig contact or the indirect
transmission through carcasses is very difficult to stop. So the best way to do it is reduce
pig densities so that it is less easy to transmit. I’d just like to point in fact if you haven’t
dealt with Texas before we have every kind of goofy animal in the world here, so the last
time I was in Hawaii a friend of mine said, oh, do you want to go hunt – we have this
deer you’ve probably never seen – Axis deer – I said, naw, we’ve got hundreds of
thousands of them – it’s, it’s cool but no, we’ve got those here too. We also have African
wart hogs – so we have African wart hogs that live in, in our area part of our state. So if
we get African swine fever it will never go away because it will stay as a reservoir in
those animals. But what we’re concerned about in the near future for everybody, even
Hawaii is – if you get African swine fever to your shores in a dense pig environment – all
of your pigs will die. One thing I want to point out – just because Hawaii raises cattle as
well, ah, so brucellosis, swine brucellosis is a big problem. There are multiple variants of
it – and I apologize for this photo but if you’re ever hunting boars and you see a boar
with gigantism of the testicles is a hall mark of being actively infected with brucellosis –
so swine brucellosis is infectious to people, if you get it you’ll have flu-like symptoms
every few weeks for the rest of your life, but in livestock there is a variant of it that has
jumped to cattle and it presents the same symptoms as cattle brucellas does, so, Bang’s
disease, Brucella Bordis, and, and that is a concern that we have is we’re gonna go back
to the same situation we used to be in as a result of the pigs. Um, infections - it’s highly
prevalent, brucellosis, ah, there actually was concern several years ago from the
government about it being weaponized and turned into a more infectious agent and
being released to, to hurt people. I – thankfully, we haven’t seen anything from that, but
the close relatedness of humans and pigs and the ability for diseases to jump I wanted
to highlight – that is a real concern for us long term, that’s, I’m just gonna skip over that.
So, just to wind down a little bit, we, we have concerns and problems about the things
that we don’t know – we talk about diseases a lot, we talk about direct damages – but
for food supply and food safety in the future there’s a very real concern nation-wide and
in every state that’s got pigs about what we’re losing that we don’t know about and our
inability to continue to feed livestock if we get in to a drought period or there’s a time
when it’s difficult to get feeds and forages – have we lost a security in our food supply
due to pigs eating away at available foraging plants. So, for us, there’s always more on
the horizon. This seems to be a gift that keeps on giving. We fight things like rabies and
vampire bats, which thankfully, you don’t have to fight, but what will fix all of this? And
really the thing that I harp on from my perspective being a person that does research
and outreach on this is – there’s areas of this country where we’ll never get rid of pigs
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even if we wanted to – I live in one of those – but also my part of the country has a
desire to have some of the pigs for cultural practices so the public doesn’t want to get
rid of them but we can all agree that there’s damages that need to be managed. And so,
what we talk about is this integrated approach to damage management using the tools
that make sense in a time and place,and then for folks wanting to manage pigs the thing
I always harp on that I have to be clear about is there is no such thing as a silver bullet.
I’ve personally used every pig management tool there is including the toxicants that
exist and none of them are a silver bullet. They all take work and they work in some
situations and not in others, but really the answer here is that without some kind of
coordinated effort across a broad area you really can’t be successful with pig
management it has to be something that folks in an area really want to buy into. For us,
we talk a lot about eradication, but obviously it’s not realistic where we live and it’s not
desired in a lot of areas either. But building that public and private partnership is tough.
There’s a lot of folks here too that just don’t trust the government, especially the
federal government and they’re not sure that they believe that government has its best
interest at heart – that’s part of the world up I grew up in here as well and I understand
that so for us the critical thing is understanding public opinions and what people do and
don’t want and then also messaging the reality of the damages we’re facing and the
risks we’re facing and trying to find a place in them that’ll where we can reduce pig
numbers to keep everyone safe but still allow them to do the things they want to do
with pigs. We talk about incentivizing eradication and that’s a, that’s a mainland US
thing to talk about eradication but really it’s about disincentivizing not managing pigs,
right, so for us folks who are making money off of pigs and they like having them
around, how do we take that incentive away to not manage your pigs, and, again, just
talking about – it really has to be across the landscape where all properties or at least
most of the properties are on the same page about how can we be good neighbors and
try to manage pigs – and we always try to provide landowners and managers whose
tools that are both practical, useful and effective and the joke I always tell people is
even if I had a silver bullet but it cost a million dollars a pig, you wouldn’t use it because
it’s not practical for anybody to use. All right, so I’m gonna wind down, I’ve blathered
on a little longer than I meant to there, I apologize, I am a professor so I tend to rattle
on and talk about fun facts all day but I, I’ve had a lot of time working on pigs and I
never say I know everything so if there’s anything I can share, answer questions, give
insight, I’ve been privileged to work all over the planet on pigs, but I also like to learn
from situations you guys are facing, so… By all means, how can I be of help? DP: I have
a question. Ah, Dixon Pacheco, with the whole \[unclear\] situation I just wanted to have
it on the record, yeah? Did you believe that pigs are the main reason of the problems
that we face in our ecosystem? Or are there other mitigations other, well I was gonna
say mosquitos are worse. Do you think that the pigs are actually number one on the list
of the problem?
JT: Yeah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cut you off.
LT: No, no – go ahead.
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JT: I was just gonna say – I think it’s an interesting question, I think it depends on the issue
we’re talking about cause there some things in the environment that pigs don’t really
contribute to but in a lot of places they’re gonna cause more environmental impact than
many of your other invasives. Ah, mosquitos though – I can’t think of anything that I
dislike more than dealing with mosquitos, but, I think the thing about mosquitos that we
never know is kinda what’s the beneficial impact for birds that, that rely on eating those
mosquitos but then also what’s the negative in the diseases they transmit. And so that
for me is a question mark, and I don’t know enough about your mosquito problem there
to really weigh in on which one is gonna be worse for you.
LT: Gothcha.
JT: I will say where I live there are areas on our coast that if you’re gonna work in that area
you have to go out with your clothing washed in pyrethrin and with a bug suit on
otherwise you’ll, you’ll just get drained dry by the mosquitos pretty quickly.
LT: Yeah.
RD: Chair, District – 1, Robert Duerr. Thanks John, that was very helpful – it was great to see
your perspective, in Hawaii it seems to be a battle that, like in Texas, that can’t be won –
the, the numbers – the reproductive values of the population is just – you just can’t go
against the math – but…
JT: Yeah.
RD: But that being said how would, what would you see as a, as a collective or a coordinated
effort – what should that be like?
JT: Yeah, that’s a great question. So what I typically say to people is that you’ve got a big
landscape but there’s areas that are gonna be hit by pigs worst every single time
because those are the valuable areas for food or for water or whatever they’re
searching for. And I think in those – highlighting where they are and when pig numbers
are really high – you mentioned that reproductive output and you’re quite right – we
often talk about when pig numbers get to a point that a landowner can’t manage them
on their own – how do you put a team together whether that’s private folks working
together or whether that’s bringing in some government aid to knock that population
down locally to where the landowner can manage it and that can be whatever tool
works, you know, traps, night shooting, ah, for us we have to just flex and work around
the pigs,for us it’s seasonal. If there’s a lot of food on the ground you can’t get them into
traps because there’s nothing they want to go into a trap for – but in those cases we
often will shoot at night with rifles with thermal or night vision, but I think that’s the
thing is, highlighting the areas that are always hit the worst and getting them some
support to reduce those populations.
15
RD: John, ah, District – 1, Duerr again. Our problem here seems to be that the large
landowners, ah, Hawaii does not have a tradition of small farms and small landowners –
so we have large landowners that the national government and national park, for
example, and they team up with NGOs and other large landowners and fence large
acres – hundreds of thousands of acres – to keep pigs out – pushing pigs into populated
areas. How do you deal in a populated area with, with eliminating the animals without
using weapons?
JT: OK. Great questions, so I’m gonna give you a few different ideas on that and, again,
everything I say is always with the caveat of your local laws or your local laws and I don’t
necessarily know them, so, we, we have the same problem here too in urban areas
where there’s a lot of pigs and it’s a growing issue. So what we typically do in those
areas is they trap them and they will get them out of the traps in to trailers and then
they will take them out of town somewhere where they can be either released into a
pen and then shot in that pen or some of the operators will shoot them in the trap with
a suppressed 22, or in the trailer with a suppressed 22, which I personally wouldn’t want
to do but some of the operators will do it. It’s very limited options in those scenarios – a
few municipalities here have proposed using a toxicant but I don’t think they’re going to
just due to the optics of pigs dying from a toxin in an urban area. Ah, I will say…
I was going to say at a point there was another option that had been suggested and I’m
gonna say it and it sounds terrible as soon as I say it and we, we advise them against it
so once upon a time if you read research papers, somebody developed the euthanasia
trailer for pigs to where they could be loaded out of a trap and then the trailer would be
sealed and, filled with a gas that would kill the pigs or, or suffocate them. That is really
bad optics and it’s, it’s also impractical and very expensive cause the gas is not cheap
and it’s a humane way to die but it’s a big area and so that may come up at a point, ah,
we had a private pest management company that wanted to know about using that and
we advised them against it mostly due to cost but also optics in an urban area.
?: I had another question \[unclear\] pigs in. Ah, as far as the cultural aspect that you had
mentioned I seen it pop up in a comment as well, right, ah, with feral pigs, especially
from the Polynesians back in the day – having some significance in their cultural
practices – here in Hawaii I do farming myself as well, yeah, some cultural practices they
actually use the pigs into for a tilling mechanism into their culture, into their – to help
mitigate the ground – is there a viable number that pigs can be used in a good sense to
help naturally till grounds for, you know, future crops, or, you know, ah, is there a
number that would make sense in the environment, x amount of acres to be actually
viable to live in ecosystem purposes – zero?
JT: I think it’s a good question, right, and this is the balance of, of people and their culture
and what they want versus the environment – obviously, the environment did not
evolve with the pig. And so any number of pigs is detrimental to the environment that it
takes away from native animals, right, and the same can be said for the cattle that I
have out grazing on the prairie – that prairie didn’t evolve with them but it did have
16
bison – we took the bison away – OK – with what you’re talking about there are some
groups that do that and they do – they call it, you know, regenerative agriculture –
they’ll bring a small area – bring some pigs in – fence it off and let the pigs really till that
soil and then they’ll move them on somewhere else and they’ll come back and replant
it. I don’t know, I don’t have stocking rate on that one but there are people who do, and
they do that. What I have seen from them, though, is that they always use domesticated
pigs so that they can manipulate those animals – the problem with the wild pigs is they
don’t want to be manipulated by people, right, so, getting them out of there again is
tough and it’s also tough to focus them just in the area you want them to be, which is
why the regenerative ag folks put up temporary pens – bring pigs in – let them do what
they do – till the soil – really, you know, forage around – and then they put them back
on a trailer and load their pens back up and they go to the next spot again. So, I think
the idea is an interesting one, but I think it’s difficult to focus, the pigs right where you
want them instead of them just wandering off wherever they’re gonna be.
RD: John, another question, ah, District – 1. There’s been some – with the cultural, ah,
importance of the pig – there’s been some talk of like can these animals be trapped and
put to a holding pen and then butchered and then that meat sold of which there would
be a market?
JT: Yeah, that’s a great question. We actually do that in Texas and, so it’s a, it’s a USDA
inspected food chain and so what we do is we have, and, of course, it’s the federal food
safety laws interacting with state laws, right? And so the way we do it – our Texas laws
allow for the trapping of these animals and the holding, the transmission to a hold
facility and then the slaughter facilities buy from that holding facility, so, you imagine,
it’s, you know, local folks, small trappers trap a few pigs, sell ‘em to the buyer, the buyer
sells them to the slaughter house and when they go through there – they go through it’s
USDA inspected – there’s a guy with a clipboard there – they do carcass inspections like
you always do for livestock and that animal get slaughtered the meat packed, and most
of that actually ends up either in Europe or it ends up in China – most of that market
over the years for us has been Europe, but you can also buy it in supermarkets and
various places. So there is a way to do that if the state laws allow it.
TWC: Taysen, District – 2 – one more comment/question. Kind of off the wall by being very
straightforward.
JT: Sure.
TWC: \[Unclear\] forest area that’s gonna be put up in development, right, and people start
building homes there. And the pigs were there first but now the residents are
complaining that, that’s a nuisance. Do you think that the people is the nuisance or the
pigs are the nuisance? They technically, going over reactive when that area they were
there first. So, I’m trying to like, um, say instead to like where we’re actually trying not
17
eliminate them fully but help keep them at the same time. So I don’t know if that’s a
question or a comment that could be elaborated on?
JT: It’s a – it’s tough one too. So, our, our state is very quickly urbanizing and developing
with lots of folks moving in and a lot of new housing developments going up in rural
areas, and far away from the city, but one of the problems that we have with pigs is that
they are extremely intelligent and once they realize that people won’t hurt them they’re
not afraid of people anymore. And we’ve had some situations where people have been
chased, attacked and we had a couple of folks that have been killed in recent years by
pigs, and so that’s one where we deal with native animals like coyotes – coyotes, you
know, they get too close to people if you make a bunch of noise throw a rock in their
general direction they go oh, OK, and they run off – they go people are dangerous – with
pigs you just make ‘em mad and so it’s been a real problem for us to try to keep pig
numbers down as those areas develop – talk to people about how you reduce pigs being
there, you know, just don’t make food available for them. If there’s water that they’re
gonna be in, you know, a \[unclear\] don’t know how much you can do about that – but
it’s a difficult thing to balance the development that’s happening with the fact that
people are creating public safety concerns for themselves by the fact that the pigs are
there and they’re going to be there. I would say we don’t have a solution to that – it is a,
a problem in progress for us as well and I’m, I’m always concerned about how many
more pig attacks we’re gonna have.
RD Ah, John, District – 1, Duerr. Now how about the funding mechanisms? You know, how
do you, how do you piece together fed funds or maybe grants – state funds, local funds
– how does this work to try to get a, get a hold on a pig problem?
JT: Yeah, so a great question. I’ll lay a few things out for you from my perspective and I’m
gonna work from, from fed down to local, um, and, of course feds, you know, the
federal funds are pretty big, um, they, most of it’s going through USDA Wildlife Services
and that program is growing, ah, I can tell – I chair the federal advisory committee for
the Wildlife Services program and so we, we always recommend to the secretary of Ag
that they make more funds available for managing pigs but also in the last Farm Bill
there was a what was called the Feral Swine Eradication and Control Pilot Program and
that was Congress trying to see if it would be cost effective to fund the mechanism to
reduce pig numbers – eradicate in some places or just reduce them in others depending
on what local people wanted. That was a pilot in the last Farm Bill. Whenever we get a
new Farm Bill the intimation has been that it’s going to be a permanent program with a
larger pot of money that states can say I want to be a part of that. And, and what’s
interesting about that is in a time when politics is extremely divided and partisaned –
that is a bill or a section of the Farm Bill that has been co-sponsored by both democrats
and republicans as this is a non-partisan issue, so that’s been good to see. That’s a big
slog of the funding. At a state level, our state does a couple of different things – for one
thing is the state directly appropriates money to help manage pigs – and so they will
partner with USDA on that or they’ll partner with other agencies to, to help pay for pig
18
management. The state also appropriates money in a grant program to county
governments. So we have a lot of counties, right, you know, it’s not like where you’ve
got big area – just one county – but it’s a grant program where county governments
only can apply and the money is to help with pig management efforts and so the county
can do a lot of things – they can pay private operators to kill pigs, they can fund a
trap/loan program – to loan traps out to private farmers and give them advice on how
to use them – it’s, it’s a number of different things they can do, ah, one other
mechanism we have here that seems to be pretty successful is we have what we call the
Texas Wildlife Damage Management Association – it’s a private landowner association –
they levy dues on themselves, so many cents an acre or so many dollars and acre – and
it goes into a pool of money that pays for damage management, a lot of it being pigs
nowadays across those member counties or across those member lands and so, it’s a,
it’s a mix of federal money, state money – down to the counties – and I’ll say a lot of
counties for us now – have developed out of their own funds – trap/loan programs –
and, and even in cases – this is kind of a neat thing I’ve seen – where the counties will
get with public school systems and fund like an Ag shop class or an Ag mechanics class
to build some pig traps and it’s simple welding and then use those traps to loan out to
producers in the county to manage pigs and then when the traps breakdown – need
repair – the school builds more – it’s fairly cost effective but it’s also gives the high
school kids experience of physical product that they’ve built something that they can
also go do for, for themselves to earn a profit later if they do that, so, it’s a mix of things
– to be honest with you and there’s never enough money, but I would say we see a lot
of creativity. We’ve also seen some NGOs do a pretty good job trying to pool resources
to manage pigs, ah, but that one’s always tough, it’s, you know, everybody’s budgets are
limited and it can be hard to have them prioritize pigs.
TWC: Thank you. Yeah, one more question. Taysen, District -2. Ah, in Hawaii we don’t have a
law set to where we can legally hunt at nighttime, but with your expertise and I believe
as well – would it be possible – do you think it would be not possible – do you think it
would be a recommendation for our DLNR to actually help maybe permit nighttime
hunting? Then that will take care of this feral pig problem we have, either be private or
at least private to start off with maybe into the state – do you think that would be a
good thing to implement a program like that?
JT: I think it’s definitely worth looking into. You know, for, for many years, um, a lot of, a lot
of Texas – well it was always illegal to hunt at night, right, for poaching reasons and
what not – as the pig problem grew there was a time that the state was asked by some
citizens to allow night hunting just for pigs, right, you can’t night hunt native species but
you can night hunt pigs. For the, for the reasons we’re talking about. And the state very
carefully considered it – they piloted that in just a few areas – and then now, of course,
it's legal to hunt at night for pigs anywhere all the time. And, and I do think it’s worth
looking into because in warm environments the pigs are very difficult to get into traps
when food is abundant and I feel like in Hawaii you’ve always got food abundant, and
in, in areas it is difficult to anything other than night shoot – we run into that – but I will
19
tell you also if you are night shooting with thermal equipment or night vision and a
suppressed rifle – the pigs will stand there while you shoot the entire sounder and it is
very helpful in that way because they don’t – I don’t think they, they think we can’t see
in the dark – I’m convinced they think we can’t see them – and so you’ll be at a
reasonable distance, but when you’re under night vision or thermal they’ll stand there
and look at you and not understand what’s happening, so, I, I think it is reasonable but
it's always a public safety concern and it was here for a long time as well or just a
burden on game wardens, how will they enforce this versus if you’re, you’re out there
poaching and what we always do in practice – if we’re gonna be out night-hunting pigs –
we call the game warden ahead of time and let them know, hey, just so you know, we’re
gonna be on so and so’s place – we’re night-hunting pigs just in case you get a phone
call we wanted to make you aware – that way they don’t waste their time on a call –
when somebody hears the gun shots in the middle of the night.
TWC: Yeah, for sure. One more, one more to add to that, yeah, Taysen, District – 2 again. As,
that’s why I mentioned about the whole private permitting, is there any way that you
can shoot me an email to maybe see your guys’ state regulation to do nighttime what
\[unclear\] nighttime – that way maybe if I wanted to talk to DLNR to maybe start like a
private land use of nighttime hunting somehow…
JT: Yes.
TWC: Maybe like introduce some time so maybe mitigate that into Hawaii’s hunting program
somehow, I don’t know, you know…
JT: Yeah. I’d, I’d be happy to put your folks in touch with our DNR folks in terms of how they
went about going through that – going through the public safety questions and, and
how all of that came together because our law enforcement for our DNR is always very
hesitant any time something like this is coming about him and understandably so and so
when they get comfortable enough with it that they essentially give the nod to our, our
Parks and Wildlife Commission to say, yeah, if you were to make that a regulation we
would be fine with it – that means they’ve done a lot of work ahead of time to feel
comfortable with that change.
TWC: Yeah. OK, that sounds good, I appreciate it, right on.
JT: Yeah.
BL: Brian, District – 4. Hey, I appreciate it – a lot of good information and stuff like that and,
I always like to play the devil’s advocate, you know, the E. coli, a lot of that could be
coming from the cattle in the streams, I’ve seen cattle working in the streams and stuff
like that and, and my thing is how much of this is self-inflicted? Like you said, you bring –
put cattle and you bring the water and you bring the food in now everyone’s crying –
now we got \[unclear\]. And \[unclear\], you know, I’ve tried to pass legislation where we
20
get allowed to use shot guns for pigs in, ah, urban areas, like you said, you know, and
every, I wish the chief left before we got to the point is, we can’t shoot ‘em, we can’t
snare ‘em, they’re, they’re intelligent animals, they get trap wary real quick and then
everyone complains about the pigs, how much of this do you think is self-inflicted?
JT: It’s, it’s a good question, you know, with your comment about like the, the cattle and
pigs and all that, yeah, we talk all the time about we made our state friendly for animals
agriculture and that includes the pigs because they’re the descendant of a mix of things
but part of that is domestic animals, and, so, for us, you know, the cat’s out of the bag,
so to speak, in that we could not take away those things on the landscape that make it
amenable for the pigs and still have animal agriculture, so for those ranchers, there’s
just no way to do that, and so it’s difficult for us because we want to get rid of the pigs
but as you say, it’s every tool in the tool kit, that’s why we continue to do research on
new tools, that’s why we worked on toxicants for so long, and I will say in the long run
there’s some work on a pig specific contraceptive and, and it they ever get it there I
think this will make the difference for urban areas especially, you know, a pig is gonna
live or seven years and if you had a contraceptive that was genetically tailored to pigs
where they could eat a medicate feed and it makes them permanently sterile for the
rest of their life – that would be something where in the meantime they’re causing
damages – it’s true – we keep doing what we’re doing to try to kill them but long term
we know they’ll eventually disappear – that is one thing that I think for urban areas will
make a difference – but that’s down the road still quite a ways. No one’s ever been able
to, to crack that nut so to speak, your question or your comment about the E. coli by the
way – and it if ever comes up where somebody says, you know, the water’s high in e-coli
– you can tell the difference between cattle E. coli, pig E. coli, human E. coli and fecal
coliforms – that stuff is all easy to tell on a test so if anybody ever says it’s one thing or
another, ask them to get specific and tell you which one it’s from or show you the panel,
the percentages – we’re dealing with this in some coastline in Texas right now where
we’ve got E. coli contamination in an estuary and we’re having to look at the breakdown
of how much is cattle, how much is human, how much is pig.
BL: \[Unclear\] yeah, I just got a recall about COSTCO E. coli carrots, and somebody died
\[unclear\]. So, you know, it’s an issue, yeah, being killed by a carrot \[unclear\].
JT: Yeah, no, oh, absolutely, I mean down here the biosecurity standards for spinach
growers now or if you see a pig track in a spinach field, till it under. You know, this is just
not, the risk is, is very high.
BL: Yeah, like I said, I grew up when pig hunting was the thing and ranchers were charging
$300 and, it was quite the elite thing and, you know, and we’ve got farmers that won’t
let people hunt on their property – they bitch about it – but they won’t let people in and
hunt and then we’ve got everyone crying at the same thing – like Leilani, you know, I got
everyone calling me – come get the pig – I can’t shoot ‘em, you know, and I, I don’t have
time to be messing with a trap so, you know, until you guys elect politicians that are
21
gonna loosen up these game laws and let me shoot the pig cause I don’t have a problem
in my yard cause my neighbors know if they hear a loud bang in the morning it’s me
putting a pig down and I don’t have a problem in four months, like you said they’re
intelligent animals and they learn to stay away from people and they know who has the
Bernie Sanders sign up in their yard, and who does it real quick, so… Like I said, you
know, I, I see these things – I’m an avid bird hunter and we’re hunting an area and, you
know, thank God we’ve got pigs cause it’s the only thing that’s eating the grass and
making trails for our game birds cause we’ve got this kill all the ungulates on sight in
Hawaii kind of thing and we’ve got these invasive grasses that are taking over and you
know the pigs – I’ve seen it where they’ve rooted up in – we’ve got native plants
growing under the grasses where they’ve got the grasses rooted up where these other
things can get in there so, like I said, it’s how you want to paint the animal and granted, I
know pigs can be devastating but my whole thing is management and we can’t seem to
get that in Hawaii – it’s either – you can’t shoot ‘em, you can’t do anything and we’ve
got axis deer problems like on Maui where we want to eradicate 100%, I mean, our
group – we want management – we don’t want the pigs overrunning and killing
everything with brucellosis but we want to be able to go out and hunt and feed our
families and everything and I spent a lot of time in Texas and I still yet have not seen a
sign of a wild pig yet.
JT: OK. Well next time you’re in Texas, let me know, I’ll solve that problem for you, um…
BL: I was just there for a week for a wedding and, a white-tailed deer \[unclear\] shooing
them out of the garden cause they’re trying to eat the flowers for the wedding…
JT: Well, and I’ll tell you too, we fight other things like in, in, in, on various islands you’ve
got guinea grass that was brought in at different times – we have it as well and we’ve
also got Nilgai antelope from India – a 600 pound antelope that evolved to eat that
stuff and we’ve got areas where native ungulates are very rare now but the Nilgai are
running wild, so it’s, yeah, it’s a goofy place in Texas, so if there’s an animal you want to
see, just ask us when you’re here, we can probably put you on it. We had a guy come a
long time ago and he goes, I think we drove by a ranch – I thought I saw a giraffe? Yeah,
you probably did. There’s everything here, it’s a strange place.
BL: Zebras in California \[unclear\] castle, I’ve seen those.
?: \[Unclear\] wart hogs…
JT: Yeah, the wart hogs – we didn’t even know we had them – we had a former governor
that brought them in and then when they finally got out – people started asking
questions about them and oh, yeah, so and so on his ranch – he’s got them, so…
LT: All right, sir, thank you very much. I got one last question.
22
JT: Sure.
LT: We got about 3 minutes, but this is a fast one…
JT: OK.
LT: Um, ah, you kinda covered everything, I just want to ask your opinion about the
helicopter eradications – I was in Texas a couple of times and I know they have, you
know, the veterans they have machine guns from the helicopters – we don’t have that
here in Hawaii yet for the hogs – we do have it for the sheep…
JT: True…
LT: I don’t \[unclear\] machine guns but in your opinion did that help – does that help to
stabilize the community or was that more of a gimmick kind of a thing?
JT: OK, I’m, yeah, so, my, my professional opinion here it’s - it depends on who’s shooting
and the equipment they have. So a lot of times when you see it, it’s recreational
shooting and it’s civilian aircraft so it’s Robinson Helicopters and they’ve got center fire
rifles and they’ve got folks that are not used to shooting from helicopters and I believe
that they’re burning ammo and having a good time – but if you watch the videos of
those – what will happen is the Robinson type helicopters are the small civilian
helicopters – they have to fly a certain speed to stay airborne and it’s faster than a pig
runs. So usually they’ll make a pass on a group of pigs and it breaks the pigs up. And
they might shoot at one or two, they might hit ‘em, they might not. When we worked
with the USDA folks that are using jet – so turbine helicopters – jet powered helicopters
– they can go slow and if you get a group of pigs out in the open and you stay behind
them – we call it climbing the ladder – you shoot the last pig in the group and then the
next one, the next one, the next one – cause they run in a straight line. That is extremely
effective where we can use aerial methods, we use them because they’re much more
cost effective and much more effective. What we shoot from the helicopters though is
we use semi-automatic shot guns so we’re using usually Benelli shotguns with a tube
extender and we’re shooting buckshot. When the USDA guys are flying its number two
buck and it’s, it’s non-toxic loads that we developed, non-lead loads, um, a lot of the
private guys that are using shotguns, they’re using double lock buck and they’re using
lead. But it can be very, very effective – the trick is having a good pilot and a good
shooter, not just somebody who’s out there for fun but somebody who’s got experience
if that makes sense.
LT: Yes, sir, all right, thank you very much. We’re gonna take a short recess after this but
can you please let us know where we can contact you or how we can get in touch with
you please.
JT: Yeah, absolutely. I’m gonna drop my email address in your Chat window and by all
means feel free to email me, I’m happy to help in any way I can.
23
LT: Yes, sir, we have a lot of questions coming in – sorry we have to re-start our computer
cause of a software update so we’re gonna be taking a recess here in two minutes but
thank you very much for your presentation – we enjoyed it a lot and it – you know – we
– \[unclear\] help.
JT: Thank you very much, happy to help.
LT: Thank you. Mahalo. OK, everyone. Sorry, we’re going to be moving on, um, from the
presentation we have the County of Hawaii – they’re kind of slow with their software
updates in our old computer so the computer’s going to do a mandatory shut down is
what this computer’s telling us right now. So, we’re gonna take a short recess and if we
can come back then we will and if we cannot come back then you guys will know… OK.
IKK: See you back shortly.
LT: So, let’s jump right back in this and we can get all the way to this budget and talk about
the finances since we have quorum – we have one, two, three, four, five. Thank you very
much and let’s jump right back into this agenda item. Agenda item number 6, New
Business, I’m going to table everything and put Discussion on our Budget first cause that
seems to be something we can talk about right now and then if we get to items number
a. and b., which is our Commissioner Reports I don’t mind holding that off until one
more month so we can hold it for the new mayor coming in with the new county council
instead of having the old people right before we go out here.
We’re moving to agenda item 6 - f. Discussion and Decision Making: What funds are
available for GMAC? What are the requirements for allocation and disbursement.
Review of the expenditure report July 1, 2024, through September 30, 2024, in support
of discussion. Commissioners, to discuss whether they can use the budget to go to
legislature opening; determine which Commissioners can travel on behalf of GMAC.
Lobbying by GMAC Commissioners is not permitted. Good thing we’re not held by the
lobbying rules and, Sunshine Law: Either two members may attend and discuss board
business subject to further restrictions or less than quorum can attend and prepare a
report but cannot discuss any board business.
6. NEW BUSINESS:
a. Discussion and Decision Making: Draft GMAC 2024 First Quarter Report to Mayor and
County Council, Commissioner Robert Duerr.
b. Discussion and Decision Making: Draft GMAC 2024 Second Quarter Report to Mayor and
County Council, Commissioner Leomana Turalde.
24
c. Discussion and Decision: Discussion on inviting speakers from Hawaii Division of
Conservation and Resources Enforcement (DOCARE) to provide status update on policy
and operations on Hawai’i Island. (Deferred)
d. Discussion and Decision: Discussion on engaging with the Division of Forestry and Wildlife
(DOFAW) and other agencies to resolve issues related to bird population counts and
watering stations for those birds. (Deferred)
e. Discussion and Decision: Fencing update on areas designated to be fenced by DOFAW, NARS or
non-governmental agencies (NGO). Fencing inventory: is there an inventory of DOFAW fencing
projects completed to date? What is the total cost of DOFAW fencing projects to date? What is
the allocated annual fencing budget? What is the repair budget allocated per year for fencing
upkeep? Does DOFAW have a fencing map or a map that includes NGO fencing areas? Where
do DOFAW fencing monies come from? Discussion on inviting DOFAW to address this topic.
(Deferred)
f. Discussion and Decision Making: What funds are available for GMAC? What are the requirements
for allocation and disbursement? Review expenditure report July 1, 2024, through September
30, 2024, in support of discussion. Commissioners, to discuss whether they can use the budget
to go to legislature opening; determine which Commissioners travel on behalf of GMAC.
“Lobbying by GMAC Commissioners is not permitted. Sunshine Law: Either two members may
attend and discuss board business subject to further restrictions, or less than Quorum can attend
and prepare report, but cannot discuss any board business”. (Taken out of order, see page 6)
g. Discussion and Decision Making: Feral Cats feces impacting Nēnēs and Hawai‘i County
environment, including Liliuokalani Gardens and other game management areas. Who
will prepare the analysis and report for the legislature’s review. (Deferred)
h. Discussion and Decision: Palila – What is the status of Palila endangered species recovery
including current population counts, factors inhibiting recovery, including fire threat in
critical habitat areas. Who will prepare the analysis and report for the legislature’s
review. (Deferred)
i. Discussion and Decision: Introduction of and discussion on various reports prepared by
the Makahanaloa Fishing Association (a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization), including the
fishing access at Peepeekeo Point. (Deferred)
j. Discussion and Decision: Letter from Richard Hoelflinger on the Skeet Shooting Range
Shutdown, Commissioner Robert Duerr. (See pages 35, 36)
25
k. Discussion and Decision: Hawai’i County DOFAW Game Bird Crop Study, Commissioner
Robert Duerr. (Deferred)
(Taken out of order, 6 – f).
Anybody want to go first. OK. I’ll go first. So, this past couple months I was looking over
the county budget, coming up for the county council elections and the mayor’s race
ahead, I looked over our budget and I saw that we had, an increase in our budget at
around 12% from the last years, ah, so, I think when I first joined we didn’t have a
budget – we had zero, and then the second year we had a small budget where we got
reimbursed, um, for our trip to Oahu and some gas and then this year, for 2024, we
have $4,172.00, so my idea looking back at our past two years of sending people to go
to Oahu for the opening of the legislature and talk in person it really helped us push our
agenda of GMAC forward. It gave us networking opportunities to build relationships
with the politicians who control the funding, um, and all of the resources \[unclear\] our
Big Island that has to do with our GMAC mission. So my idea was to try and get a basic
understanding of what we want to see, how much people we want to send and what are
the criteria or if we can send two and two other people later. Um, oh, yeah, that was my
ideas or the thoughts that I had.
RD: You know, one question. Is that budget ’24 – when does that expire? Does that go
through the fiscal year or, do we know when this budget expires?
BK: Could I answer that. This is Barbara Kossow. OK. The budget was set by Mayor Kenoi
back in I want to say 2014 – five thousand dollars each year, and over the years it’s kind
of changed a little, ah, drop in the amount so we could balance our budget within the
Mayor’s office. That goes for a fiscal year. Each fiscal year.
BL: \[Unclear\] fiscal year.
BK: It ends on June 30, 2025.
st
IKK: Midway, we’re midway. It started July 1 …
BK: And we haven’t used any of the amount in the budget this fiscal year – so just letting
you know. OK.
IKK: That’s something to consider and plan out…
LT: Um-hum.
IKK ….through June.
26
RD: Ah, Chair, Duerr – District -1, so, I mean, it makes sense that the Chair goes…
LT: Yes…
RD: ….who would go? And then who else goes?
LT: I think the people with the most experience should go and just looking at that – just me
and you and then after – to me when we get back, we send two other people or one and
one. Cause I don’t need to go every time, but it seems to me like, if we can set people
up for the next fiscal year – cause he’s gonna be here a couple more years and so I
don’t, you know, I don’t mind…
RD: You’ll have grey hair…
LT: Yeah.
?: I’m already \[unclear\].
LT: Yeah, so I’m trying to look into who has relationships with people already.
RD: OK, so we’re talking Chair and we’re talking Brian Ley?
LT: Yes, for the first one.
RD: OK. And then when – what would the dates be?
LT: Ah…
RD: Would it be the opening session, would it be – what do you think?
BL: Opening session, Brian, District – 4. Opening session and then we see what’s coming up
and then we can send a hit team to go talk to the groups – whether it’s a bill that we
really wanted or a bill that we really hate – we’ll know who’s in charge and we can send
people with the most qualified to go talk to those people on that bill – like if it was a
fishing bill you’d probably be the one sent up \[unclear\]…
RD: Right. OK. So, are we ready to make a motion?
LT: Um… Yeah, yeah.
Action: A motion was made by R. Duerr to send Leomana Turalde and Brian
Ley to the opening session of the 2025 legislature and to share with the
27
legislators GMAC concerns and issues. Seconded by L. Turalde. Motion
passed unanimously.
RD: Duerr, District – 1, I make a motion that we send the Chair and District – 4, Brian Ley, to
go to the opening session of the 2025 legislature to let the legislators know what GMAC
has, in its concerns and issues.
LT: District – 3, Turalde. I second that motion. We can have a discussion right now. I think,
um, I guess what I’m looking at this is, I guess this is the foundation of like us starting
our SOPs, which, with spending our funds, right, cause do we have any SOPs on how we
allocate our funds or how much we can use for anything? I didn’t see any notes so… Um,
maybe we can come up with like a standard operating procedure of spent - how we
allocate the money and who gets it and how we sign off…
RD: Right, like, so that we’re in agreement now what, what would that budget look like?
LT: Um-hum…
RD: For instance, we know we have air fare…
LT: Air fare.
RD: We know we have, you know, taxi/uber to the legislature, um…
LT: So that going all be under travel, and then I guess if just a day, then lunch.
RD: Right. Per diem.
LT: Yeah, per diem.
RD: Lunch.
BL: \[Unclear\]
LT: OK, I mean that’s basic travel, ah, travel and per diem.
IKK: And you would work with the Mayor’s – so Barbara.
LT: OK, yeah.
IIK: Yeah.
28
BK: I wanted to chime in on that – there’s procedures in place on travel for all county
employees and for this particular travel with this budget – it needs to be approved by
the Managing Director which is Bill Brilhante coming in and Bill served on the GMAC
Commission (attorney), so I don’t know if some of you remember that. I believe Tom
Lodge was the Chair at that time, but there is a process in place in booking the flights
and I wanna make sure that – with the per diem – that nothing is spent on liquor – so
when you have your lunch and order a beer – it has to be a separate billing when you go
to pay because I had to answer the last time why two beers were ordered. We do not do
that, OK? There are procedures in place. All right, so I will work with you on that.
LT: Yes, ma’am. Thank you very much.
BL: Thanks, Barbara.
LT: It’s stressful, you know, the country boys going to the city. It’s \[unclear\].
?: I know, I know…
LT: Yes, sir?
RD: Duerr, District – 1. We need something little handouts. Something that when you guys
go like a one page sheet, maybe back and front, front and back.
LT: So, I put over here, like a gift to all of the people that we come into contact with whose
gonna be making the laws for us and that’s a card, you know, maybe a – what you call
the – the ones you buy from the gift shop with the pictures on top?
BL: Post cards…
LT: Post cards, yeah, like post cards and something like from the Big Island with our animals
on top, something presentable…
?: That’s a good idea.
LT: ….yeah, that we can leave inside of their room, on top of their desk, you know,
something cool like a trinket, like an animal or something that they can see it every day
and… You know, subliminal message then with something like that, like a – like a feral
pig, right, like a boar or something – looks real cool like a little toy, cause I think stuff like
that might be memorable in passing, right, cause these are all city guys – they all dress
in suits and so last time I went I wore my camouflage shirt just – they’re gonna expect
me to f_________ play a role so I’m gonna play a role, you know, I’m gonna put a
camouflage on and I’m a hunter, I know what I’m talking about so, have a brochure, a
Makana \[unclear\].
29
IKK: Barbara are there any rules in place for buying souvenir items by GMAC. Like
merchandise or something?
BK: Well, in the past what, I don’t recall what year it was, but, I believe some of the funds
were used to buy some beef jerky – that was nicely bagged – and a short, or a brief like
a flier was added to that. I don’t know what year that was but put together your
proposal and again the mayor or the managing director will approve it. OK? And if you
do a little brochure or postcards – we can print that up inhouse cause we do have a
Machine Room which can do the printing. And we can do color as well. Just need to let
me know what you want to do. OK.
TWC: Question, Taysen, District – 2. Barbara, let’s say if you were to make home made things,
ah, I do dehydrated meats, as well. Would that be something I would be allowed
\[unclear\]. Let’s say if I…
BK: Ah, well, you can, you can gift that it’s just that if we’re gonna be using funding from this
– from your budget that has to be approved, and I don’t know – certain vendors we can
buy from and…
TWC: \[Unclear\] I wouldn’t need the fund – it would be something from me.
BK: Oh, you can do that. If you haven’t gone to the opening of the legislature – people will
take makana – they’ll take gifts to, to…
TWC: \[Unclear\] like, yes, I going provide it but…
LT: \[Unclear\]
TWC: ….our Commission…
BK: Right, right.
LT: OK, just to wrap up this nomination…
BK: Motion…
LT: Motion, yes, motion, sorry, just to wrap up this motion of discussion of sending, me and
Brian to Oahu for the opening of the legislature – I just want to close that part and the
discussion was to write down standard operating procedures, a letter of intent, come up
with a brochure, our travel and all – basically a plan – and then submit that at the next
meeting, but just to close out this motion to send both of us – just like to take, ah, yes,
they’re back. Let’s take a roll call vote starting with District – 1?
RD: Aye.
30
LT: District – 2?
TWC: Aye.
LT: District – 3, aye. District – 4?
BL: Aye.
LT: District – 8?
CO: Aye.
LT: And, District – 9?
JA: Aye.
LT: All agreed. Thank you very much. OK. Looking at the agenda. What else? So, we got
travel, we got expenses, we got gifts, I just wanted to clear up in, in…
RD: On the budget…
LT: On the budget and make sure we didn’t miss anything before we move on. Ah… Let’s
just take 30 seconds to think about it – let’s not \[unclear\] – we got 15 minutes so we can
spend the budget on. Right? Cause flying to the leg, travel costs and per diem, that’s one
idea and then we do the other brochure and cards and stuff in house so that’s – I don’t
know if that comes out of our budget, or the county does that on its own. But I’m pretty
sure trying to convince the county to pay for that instead of taking it out of us, so, with
the funds left over it should be – if we just take out half of this it should be about
$2,100.00.
BL: \[Unclear\] more than, more than – you know that’s a few trips.
RD: \[Unclear\] legislators tell us, hey, listen, it’s important that you show up at a critical
\[unclear\] if they give you that heads up then basically someone’s willing and can, I
mean, it’s certainly – it’s something we would want to do.
LT: Shall we plan for around 3 trips? Is that, is that…
RD: \[Unclear\] three more trips after your two.
LT: Ah, yeah, or, um, yup.
31
RD: I know when press club was – when we were lobbying with Senator Lorraine Inouye on
an \[unclear\] you know, we took a couple, she would call sometimes on a Sunday, hey,
listen, somebody needs to be here tomorrow. And so, that was at least a couple of
times. Depends on how mission critical it is. If we try to get pro-active and like what,
what our last representative told us which was – the Farm Bill \[unclear\] a pilot program
– it’s doing that – that is likely going to be in the Farm Bill – it crosses both the – and
there’s a lot of money there and so one of our key advocates – one allies is gonna be US
Department – USDA Wildlife Services, so, if we’re putting together a team of that, that
may need people coming over or maybe it’s someone – we fly somebody over, you
know, um, so there’s, there’s, there’s options there. If we’re looking at like, um, a day –
what’s a day gonna cost? So, a round trip is – let’s call…
LT: One-twenty…
RD: Let’s call it – let’s call it $150.00 – so there’s $300.0 then, then uber in/uber out is…
LT: Is $60.00…
RD: Forty-bucks. Twenty in and twenty out. So, forty…
LT: And maybe about $30.00 for lunch…
RD: So it’s like $200.00 so, you’ve, you’ve brought the $225.00, maybe $250.00 so, you
know, we’re looking at max, we’re looking at like in the ballpark of $500.00 for two guys
to go over for one day, you know, which seems to be reasonable. And then if we do
omiyage or makana, it’s reasonable to, but we’d have to go how many legislators are
there? There’s 26 senators and how many legislators are, are there 48 or but, anyway…
LT: Yeah, \[unclear\] right?
RD: Right. So that package may be a plan maybe a couple hundred bucks. Right? So we’re,
we’re, so what’s \[unclear\] a day could be what $500.00?
LT: Five to seven hundred, depending on our mission. It’s first day – first day versus last –
last day will be the cheapest, right, cause…
RD: Yeah, the last – what happens at the end of the session is a lot of times – that’s when
the bills are really at like a point of, doing conference, are they going to make it or not,
so like if you want kill a bill or you want to push a bill – that last \[unclear\] April, the last –
that last month is critical.
LT: Should we plan for – have three trips booked and then plus one emergency –
emergency meaning taking a vote tomorrow – we can send one or two – it doesn’t need
to be a team, I can head up, eh, you gotta go – can you go by yourself – can you fly out
tomorrow?
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RD: Yeah.
LT: Do you want to go testify so that’s the emergency…
RD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we, we would, we would do the spreadsheet on that like a
proposal – get to Barbara and then, and then so we know, I mean, that – we’re basically
saying that, that’s a big – that’s the biggest part of our budget.
LT: Yeah. And everything would have to follow that.
RD: Yeah, OK.
LT: OK, so spreadsheet – you wanna do the spreadsheet?
RD: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
LT: Yeah, so that’s…
RD: \[Unclear\] miss you guys.
LT: Yeah.
RD: I don’t know if we can share it?
LT: OK, I’ll, you know what, let’s take a vote on who’s gonna do the spreadsheet.
RD: Chair, I’ll volunteer. OK. There you go…
LT: \[Unclear\] what district am I in? You know, and I’m gonna volunteer to do one of the post
cards, just because I’m good at technology and a sense of art. If you guys want to do
another one then we can. I see it as a way of getting the county to produce your art, as
an artist, so if you guys want to produce your art and the county can handle, you know,
creating our art and then we can give it away. Cause maybe you might have a picture of
a bird, or, you know, a picture of a bird that you want to show on Mauna Kea – bird
hunting – put that on a post card and give it to them, ah, well I’ll volunteer for that. Um,
OK, you got the spreadsheet, brochure, I’ll reach out to all of you to get this brochure.
OK. Are we gonna top off the budget for now? We can have a discussion about it almost
every meeting for updates.
IKK: Yes…
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Action: A motion was made by L. Turalde and seconded by B. Ley to send two
GMAC commissioners to meet with the new mayor and/or the new managing
director to discuss GMAC’s issues, concerns and goals. The motion passed
unanimously.
LT: Oh, yeah, OK, I’d like to make a motion to send two representatives to communicate
and meet with the new mayor of Hawaii County, and, and his whole staff is coming in
nd
next month, ah, after the 2 – I don’t really know what dates they’ll be in here, but, um,
we can either do it next month or in January, ah, yeah…
BL: \[Unclear\]
LT: Hm?
?: Do it while…
LT: Yup, right when they’re \[unclear\] be the foundation and start this thing with them, so,
I’d like to make a motion to send two representatives to go communicate with the
mayor and his staff, the new mayor and staff.
BL: Brian Ley, District – 4, I second the motion.
?: Ah, ah, discussion?
LT: Any discussion? Would you guys like to go meet the mayor, come to Hilo?
?: Depends on the need…
?: Depends on what it is…
?: Yeah.
LT: Ah…
RD: You know, I make a suggestion that Taysen, ah, go, you know, it’s in town – go and, um,
talk story and meet the guys and then come back and give us a report.
LT: OK. How does that sound? Can we take a vote on that? District – 1?
RD: Aye.
LT: District – 2?
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TWC: Aye.
LT: District – 3, oh, aye, District – 4?
BL: Aye.
LT: District – 8?
CO: Aye.
LT: District – 9?
JA: Aye.
LT: Thank you guys very much… Whoa…
IKK: Just had a new baby… OK.
Action: A motion was made by L. Turalde and seconded by C. Okumura to
defer New Business, items a, b, c, d, e, g, h, I, j, k, and everything else. Motion
carried unanimously.
LT: I got time for – all right, so that cleans out the – meet the mayor and our finances. OK,
thank you guys, I just wanted to clear up the finances, that was a real big thing because I
didn’t want to wait on that – we got the money back in July and I feel like halfway
through the year we should already have that unlocked and then we should have our
next year’s plan for finances in, within the next 3 months, based on what we do right
now. Ah, we can move forward… Oh… Yeah… OK, looking at our time that we have left,
we have about five minutes, I’d like to make a motion that we push everything and table
everything till next meeting that comes after, um, Discussions on \[unclear\] a. and b.
We’re just gonna wrap this up together since it’s just the first quarter and second
quarter reports. So, first quarter and second quarter reports are me and Mr. Duerr over
here. I’d like to hold them off on giving them to county council and the mayor – we can
decide on this next month and vote on it. We have a new staff coming in – I know a
couple of the county council members just changed and we have a new vice chair and
chair, um, of the county council plus, ah, the Mayor Kimo Alameda and all his team is
coming in, so I’d like to meet them instead of the, the team that’s going out. So, I’d just
like to make a motion if we can pass this over to next month.
CO: Cortney, District – 8, second.
LT: Thank you. Do we have a discussion?
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RD: Um, one note on the discussion of the letter from Hoelflinger on the skeet range shut
down, I just talked to my son-in-law in the hallway, who works at Parks & Rec and the
skeet range is open. So, they’ve opened the skeet range, and it’s limited, I mean, I think
once a week or twice a week – but they – once a week – OK, so that’s, that’s good
news…
BL: Does that include the trap range too?
RD: Yeah, yeah, the trap range – this is…
BL: The trap range went down from 4 days to 3 days, to one day.
LT: All right, that was the discussion. OK, we’re gonna take a vote to push this on to the next
meeting, and have this tabled till them. Yes, sir.
RD: ….quickly. One thing that Richard Hoelflinger mentioned which was the – that the
getting rid of – at the skeet – at the range – that, um, the power is almost there and
looking to get the power lines, get the power lines to this trap range and partner with
some \[unclear\] NRA. Um, that he said would be highly likely, in the past they were
willing to help fund so we – it may be an opportunity for like in a range situations in, ah,
in Hawaii of like trying to find professional organizations that do this – to try to partner
with us and get some wins here. Um, and that’s it Chair.
LT: I like that idea. I just saw, I saw like a new style of skeet where it’s a fan and then they
shoot it and it’s just a propeller that goes up like this instead of the launching and
throwing – you just wound it up like on a Makita screwdriver and it flies and then you
blast that. So, I don’t know if that, um, like push it a little bit more with new technology
coming in with ranges and stuff but, I like that idea.
LT: Did we take a vote…
LT: Oh, OK. So, we’re gonna vote on pushing it to the next meeting. Ah, District – 1?
RD: Aye.
LT: District – 2?
TWC: Aye.
LT: District – 3, aye, District – 4?
BL: Aye.
LT: District – 8?
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CO: Aye, sorry…
LT: No worries. And last is District – 9, you sir?
JA: \[Aye\]
LT: OK. I saw him say aye. All agreed. Thank you very much. We’re tabling the rest to next
meeting and we will figure it out, um, going to agenda item number 9. Announcements.
The next meeting will be held December 17, 2024, at 9:00am at 25 Aupuni Street, Puna
conference room, #1501, Hilo, HI 96720. Announcements 9 b. Open Forum: Public’s
opportunity to announce past, ongoing or future matters in the County. No discussion
or voting on these matters. OK. So, this is an opportunity for the public and community
to announce any ongoing, future or past matters in the County. So, this kind of like an
open discussion for them. So please let your people know, let your friends know, let
your family know and all the people who care about the GMAC Commission and what
we do know that this is an opportunity for them to come and have a voice. I know we
don’t always let people just rant off and talk, they got to stick to agenda items, but this
is the only time that they can come and just give their idea or give their manao not
pertaining to specific agenda items. So that’s – this is kind of an important one for
normal community members or hunters or farmers or anyone with ideas.
RD: Chair – one note, I noticed in the meeting Tara had her hand up…
LT: Oh, yeah, ah, you know what, she actually just had a question and it was more of a
statement with the presenter having like a positive view of always managing animals
and not having, um, any points of like what they provided like food or any positive
points for hogs – it’s more whatever we talked about – management and control – all of
the words that we used is about management and control and people don’t really have
any positivity when speaking on food or, ah, like our, you know our game animals
\[unclear\] so she just wanted to ask how come there’s more negativity and not any
positivity when it comes to food animals, right, this is a food animal and we talked about
it negatively so… Yeah, and that’s the main problem. Um, OK, right, ah, oh, shoots, well
we kind of, ah, sorry Tara, we just adjourned – just went over the last announcement for
the meeting so this is actually the – the ending of the meeting right now. Oh, just to
clarify – OK – well you can drop it in the Chat, um, we have it in the Chat. Oh, that was,
OK, sorry, on that, that was actually Nani’s comment coming over as a question.
Anyway, let’s vote to adjourn this meeting at 11:01am, ah, roll call vote, One?
RD: Aye.
LT: Two?
TWC: Aye.
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LT: Three? Aye. Four?
BL: Aye.
LT: Five, six, seven, eight?
CO: Aye.
LT: And District – 9, sir, that’s you.
JA: Aye.
LT: OK. Thank you, guys very much this adjourns our GMAC Committee meeting. That’s a
good one on hogs. Thank you, guys very much.
7. COMMISSION REPORT: (Deferred)
a. Regulations Affecting Keauhou Bay and Logistical Issues, and Potential Solutions,
Commissioner Robert Duerr.
8. NEXT MEETING AGENDA ITEMS:
a. Open Forum: Public’s opportunity to submit a request to place specific items on the
agenda for the next meeting. No discussion or voting on these matters.
b. Commissioners, opportunity to suggest any other items to be placed on the agenda for
the next meeting. No discussion or voting on these matters.
9. ANNOUNCEMENTS:
a. Next Meeting: December 17, 2024, at 9:00 a.m. 25 Aupuni Street, Puna Conference
Room, #1501, Hilo, HI 96720
b. Open Forum: Public’s opportunity to announce past, ongoing or future matters in the
County. No discussion or voting on these matters.
10. ADJOURNMENT (11:00 AM):
The meeting adjourned at 11:01.
Respectfully submitted by,
Barbara Kossow
Secretary
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