2014-02-24 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – February 24, 2014 something like that if there isn’t any data or any type of research on it. It’s like your word against mine. You know, I going doubt you, you going doubt me. I can hearing only one case, I not hearing it’s an epidemic or whatever. You know justification the causes, you know, it has to be really what I mean the word, yeah, OK, fine; \[unclear\] but is there data to it? Is there proof that it’s an ongoing thing? That’s what I’m getting at. L. Hadway: There is one study that I’m aware of, of pseudo rabies on Hualalai. And we can get – look into that documentation \[unclear\] older and \[unclear\] Willie-Joe (Camara) is very knowledgeable about the disease but that… K. DeCoito: I mean you can be knowledgeable for \[unclear\] but the whole thing is, is getting a cause of justification. There are reasons why \[unclear\]. That’s what \[unclear\] the data. Chair Sylvester: OK. And I think the USDA did a study a while back too so that might be available somewhere. OK. Let’s move to next item. Item b is the update on the DOFAW Game Management Program Development: draft conceptual plan that I believe Jordan Jokiel and Scott Fritz was working on that. b) Update on the DOFAW Game Management Program Development: DRAFT CONCEPTUAL PLAN. L. Hadway: One of the items that’s happening this legislative session is we have made a request based on one of our past GMAC meetings when Esther Kiaaina – it was a few months back – and we made an additional request to the – actually to the governor – for an additional $750,000 dollars to go towards a game program. So in that we’ve developed some conceptual planning. We’ve put together a real kind of brief 2 page, basically document to help communicate to legislators what we’d like to do and I’m getting zoomed down through this and show you another document as well, but basically it’s to build the program through staffing and also infrastructure support – implementing planning, operations, so this plan is in a conceptual stage – it shows what a branch So one of the – just so you folks know – so Pittman-Robertson right now we generally get $1.5 million dollars every year from the federal government. This number is actually not accurate right now, hunting licensing fees we used to get $400,000 a year when we had the stamp fee associated with hunting licenses. We’re hoping to get that restored, so this number is actually more like $80,000 a year. And in the new budget request to $750,000 so our hopeful budget for the Game Wildlife Program would be $2.6 million and in FY16, $3.4 million. And this actually brings the budgeting on par with some of the other programs that are running in DOFAW. So one of my objectives in my new role is to try and kind of raise the resources available to the wildlife program and in particular the game program and if any of you heard Esther (Kiaaina) speak our deputy director or were at the hearing – Friday – you know this is a priority for us and our original 5