2013-09-23 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

Home

Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – September 23, 2013 Mr. Aila: With regards to Pu’u Wa’awa’a and Pu’u Anahulu, we’re looking at habitat conservation plan but much of that land is gonna be available for hunting. So don’t let the habitat conservation plan scare you because there is a place for hunting within that habitat conservation plan, within the general area. K. De Coito: It would take a while for us to sit and talk; we don’t have time to do that now. Chair Sylvester: I’m gonna get back to the commissioners first and get our questions through and then we’ll get back to the public. Mr. Aila offered to come back on a Saturday outside of this meeting arrangement due to Sunshine laws to further the discussion on varies issues. Lisa Hadway also offered to spend some time with the group. Chair Sylvester: We’ll start Mark Bartell. M. Bartell: I’d like to go back to the game management plan. I have yet to be able to find one. Even when we’re operating off today – and to a large extent you know getting a game management plan in the hands of the hunters will answer a lot of questions. Cause right now we don’t know how we manage it. And in fact, if you look at Mauna Kea I think it’s mismanagement that put us in the position to have to kill all the sheep on Mauna Kea because we let the population get so large. So if it is a resource and it is important to everybody who depends on supplementing their grocery store bills, a game management plan that we could look at and we could read and we could understand, we’d know what the state is thinking – has got to be really high – it’s really important – it’s really critical. So I know we’re short a couple resources but when can we expect one? I mean, we’ve been living without one for since I can remember. Years…We keep hearing it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming. There are people in this room that have worked on it and you know where does it fall on DLNR’s priority list? On your priority list, because it’s really high on ours. Mr. Aila: The 2 vacancy openings I can tell you we’ve pulled out all the stops to get them moved up and so the hiring process has been accelerated for that. So that tells you that that’s a priority. I can’t tell you exactly when the game management plan is gonna be – see I don’t want to make that promise because it depends on getting some guys hired, getting them brought up to speed, taking a look at the existing draft. We have some challenges with the existing draft so we have to go back and make some changes there, then we’ll make that available for you folks to take a look at. It’s not the answer that you wanted, you wanted a date and I don’t have a date for you. M. Bartell: So where does it fall in the priority – I mean is it in the top… 8