2014-02-24 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – February 24, 2014 did is I caught the sow and the pigs, I put them in my truck in dog kennels, I took ‘em up to part of the forest and I released them. L. Hadway: Um-hum. M. Bartell: Under this definition – Have I broken the law? L. Hadway: Well, and that takes us to the prohibited activities, the second part of the question that was posed to me by you folks…And so you know this rules making process went through its public hearing and then we have all of those comments and we’re integrating in the comments to the 124 rules. As it stands now, based on public comments we received during the process – both at the public hearings and written comments – we’re proposing to modify this section in the current draft to – as it stands now it was written to transport and release wild animals or wildlife – if now we’re just gonna have it prohibit release. So you can transport those animals and bring them home and confine them but if you were to release them in the forest then, yes, that would be, you would have broken the rule. M. Bartell: So, Lisa, that’s a pretty common practice used by pig hunters, if I’m not, and I’m not a pig hunter, but as far as I understand it and the guys that I represent here on this side of the island, that is a fairly common practice given that our landscape is so broken up by development and you’ve got public land and private land and housing developments and people move pigs around to keep the – the quality of the animal high – or try to make it higher. It’s a practice that’s been going on for generations, frankly. I don’t understand, after all the public comment that occurred why don’t we just – I mean I understand the purpose for the law, right, I mean coqui frogs and whatever, nobody has any benefit in those things, right, but why don’t we just exclude game animals, and you can be very specific about it, right? Sheep, pigs, goats, and just be done with this. Yet…This process is still ongoing and those comments are still getting integrated and then what happens is this goes to our lawyers, the Attorney General’s office, they review, and they determine whether we need to go back to a public hearing or if we move the package forward to the Board of Land and Natural Resources. And there’s gonna be more opportunity to comment at that point as well on the 124 package, but it’s still, still several probably a few months away from moving towards that – that opportunity for public comment again. I think you’d get a lot less comment from the hunting community specifically the guys I represent if we just made this change now and when it came out we wouldn’t go through this hoopla again. Chair Sylvester: So Lisa what happens if this law does pass or, you know, this rule, and like I mean in residential areas now if pigs come in people’s yards is there a permit process that…And how involved is that and – would that being – cause right now like, you know, animals coming down into people’s yards and you know people kinda just \[unclear\] they go and catch it but you know what do 3