GMAC Minutes 12.17.24 Final draft

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BM: Yeah, mahalo for having me. I'm Blake McNaughton, I'm the president of Makahanaloa Fishing Association, (slide starts) there's kind of our shoreline there and it looks kind of small for you guys to see and all that. I'm sure that [unclear] afterward but that's one of the historic maps we've been working on—on the right side is all the historical, you know, Hawaii [unclear] the shoreline and then on the left is like [unclear] —still old names but more the plantation style names and so on the very top of that map is, is Kolekole Gulch and [unclear] down to just below Papaikou [unclear]. So,most of our members, they're from those towns— Honomu, Papaikou, Pepeekeo, we have quite a few from Hilo. We were birthed out of an agreement that was made in 2003 and that was when Continental Pacific was developing the shoreline down side of Pepeekeo—the sugar mill had closed—Continental bought it up on either side of the mill —about four miles of the shoreline and they started putting up fences and gates and the community said, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is our grounds and so thanks to the community at that time they negotiated with Continental some accesses and, I'll kind of run through those in a minute and give you guys a little more history of that because it's a long story but, needless to say, one thing was promised and another thing now is being in a different time, but that's who we're born out of that—and that fishing access committee that was formed at that time is kind of our central core and so most of our members is from, is from Pepeekeo in that area —that shoreline that they know but in 2019 we had a meeting with a bunch of fishers and we started being like you guys are seeing more places being closed off and said, you know, do we need to expand out from Pepeekeo because we having this— Kolekole being closed for—was closed that out for 3 years and, now we're seeing [unclear] closed things go up here and there and not three months later, ah, [unclear] got gated off and still we haven't reopened that so at that point we formed the Makahanaloa Fishing Association and the mission was really to preserve public access—fishing access and cultural gathering access for that stretch of coastline from Hilo out to— I think our farthest number is from Laupahoehoe, so I wouldn't say we go that far, but that's really our mission and we've been struggling with that ever since. We have— had some successes, I mean, it's been 5 years since then, we manage three gates for access and change the codes regularly and so that's been going for 5 years. It's been helpful for property owners—we have one private agreement—that was actually forced on them I guess, by the rules of the state being in a state conservation district, and so they had to go out to community and put a fishing access in there so we managed that one—it's just past 23 flats (ka Lae kohola)—a place called Ka'akepa. We hold bimonthly aloha aina days, so every other month [unclear] on our shoreline and usually get 20-30 guys to come down and cut grass—just kind of bounce around and keep those accesses open and plant native plants and do that kind of stewardship. We just got a grant from Hawaii Community Foundation for a capacity building grant and so we're gonna use that to basically put towards a part-time coordinator and try help for this advocacy piece and push the ball wherever—with the County or the state and with private property owners and so I feel like we're growing and we're getting—figuring it out where, where we need to push and who we need to talk to and, and forming those relationships. We planted over 1,000 plants on the one shoreline— native plants, ti, kukui, kamani, naupaka, niu, [unclear], ah, so [unclear] in five years. And then one thing 5