2013-09-23 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

Home

Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – September 23, 2013 budget, I asked staff to break this up because we have game management grants and non-game management grants. So the grants involved with game management come up to about $2 million dollars per year, they’re assigned to specific tasks such as how many surveys are done across the State. How many operational personnel are funded to do these things. There’s a very specific plan and we can make that plan available to the commission and members of the public. We get between $10 million and $20 million dollars a year for non-game management competitive grants. So at any time there could be a pool of about $20 million dollars of which some years are multiple years in the grant. And these are used for invasive species, these are used for pertinent endangered species, these are used for conservation plans, there are any number of reasons that these are used. So if you take the $20 million dollar, which is generous, and consider that our annual operating budget for the department is about $120 million dollars a year. It comes out to about just slightly less than 20% of DLNR’s budget. If you take the $2 million that comes out to about 1 ½ % of DLNR’s budget. If you take DLNR’s $120 million operating per year to the State budget it’s less than 1% of the State budget. So it gives you an idea of the scale of how money goes through and how money compares to other programs within the department as well as other programs within the State of Hawai’i. D. YOUR THOUGHTS AS TO THE IMPACT(S) OF PRIORITY 1 AND 2 OF THE STATE’S WATERSHED PROTECTION PLAN ON SUSTAINABLE HUNTING AND FISHING, AS WELL AS PROTECTION OF TRADITIONAL CULTURAL GATHERING RIGHTS Mr. Aila: With regards to my thoughts on the impacts priority 1 and 2 of the State’s Watershed Protection Plan on sustainable hunting and fishing, as well as protection of traditional cultural gathering rights, it will be on a site specific process so if we have 5% currently of the priority watersheds in the State protected now, and the goal is to double it basically another 5% to make it 10%, it still leaves about 10% of the areas that we have either in forest reserves or other DOFAW controlled properties available for other uses. So with regards to my thoughts on this, is it’s a small price to pay to ensure that our children and our grandchildren continue to get drinking water in the near future because we know that things are changing right now. Just look around you, the amount of rainfall is getting less and less. All the models from different agencies clearly show that we’re going to see 15 to 30% difference over the next 10 to 30 to 40 years. As the head of the department right now, adding another 5% to priority watershed protection is a small price to pay to ensure our grandchildren will have a reliable source of water to drink and a reliable way of protecting our forests so that we prevent sedimentation from entering streams and entering into the near shore reefs as well as allowing for the recharge of our ground water supplies and making sure that the other part of the Governor’s initiative – which is not part of the rain forest, but it’s part of making sure that we have enough water for agriculture and other uses in the State of Hawai’i is to bring up the maintenance and repairs of dams and reservoirs in the State of Hawai’i. So if we take care of 3