2014-02-24 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – February 24, 2014 T. Lodge: Just one question while you’re getting the thing going there – the large areas include – incorporated into all of that acreage. L. Hadway: Yeah. T. Lodge: OK. L. Hadway: \[Power-point back on\] So one thing I wanted to do was to just give an opportunity cause a lot of people often don’t get to see our work chart of how we’re organized and so it’s important to know that the Board of Land and Natural Resources – you often hear BLNR – they’re actually the decision making body appointed by the governor that oversees the entire department. So Rob Pacheco is our Hawaii Island representative. Chairman William Aila is the Chair of the department. So under the Department of Land and Natural Resources there are several divisions. It’s the Office of Coastal and Conservation Lands, State Historic Preservation, Bureau of Conveyances, State Parks, Division of Aquatic Resources, DOCARE, Land Division, Engineering, and Boating and Ocean Recreation. Just so you know how Division of Forestry and Wildlife is cut up – I put up our main programs over there – particularly pertaining to the Hawaii Island branch – which is cut into Forestry, Na Ala Hele, Wildlife and the Natural Area Reserves system. So I just wanted everybody to see that – how we’re organized – it helps me. So Division of Forestry and Wildlife – we’re the largest line division within DLNR. We have 200 civil service employees and there’s 200 other kind of contract employees that we oversee. We are actually the oldest forest management agency in the United States. We were found in 1903 and amazingly th we’re the 11 largest in the US. We manage the most state acres in forestry in the country – which is we manage nearly 1 million acres in forest reserve, NARS, wildlife sanctuaries, plant sanctuaries, game management areas and I also wanted to mention the endangered species component there – because in Hawaii – like it or not we have nearly 1/3 of all the listed species in the US and when you consider we’re only 2/10s of 1 percent of the land area – that makes up the United States – that’s pretty substantial statistic. So on Hawaii Island – just for your – so you folks know we manage nearly 50% of the state ceded lands – 700,000 acres. 70% of the state forest reserves, designated 75% of the natural area reserves, 18 Na Ala Hele programs and over 600,000 acres of hunting land. I always like to remind everybody that the Big Island is the center of the universe and the state – and when I was the branch manager here and other island branches used to complain – I said we manage all of you plus a bunch of space – so just to put it in perspective. So 27.6 of the Island of Hawaii is managed by DOFAW so those green areas are DOFAW managed lands. As I mentioned, they’re designated as forest reserve, natural area reserve, game management area, plant sanctuary – so they’re just the land that have been designated as such, they’re state lands designated and under the jurisdiction of our division of forestry and wildlife. So there’s other state lands that are under the jurisdiction of Land Division – there’s approximately over 200,000 acres on the island managed 13