2014-05-19 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – May 19, 2014 HB 2070 – the Watershed Initiative Program – that established a new program under DLNR for staffing. They wanted to have a whole covey of DLNR people to work on the Watershed Initiative, which would hire probably six or seven more people. So Water and Land deferred that in the House and that was Rep. Evans. HCR 98 – a house concurrent resolution that requested DLNR to work collaboratively with the Department of Agriculture and the Agro-Business Development Corporation to eradicate for all pigs statewide. Other groups that opposed were the Hawaii Hunting Association and the Wild Turkey Federations, and others poured in a lot of opposition to kill this resolution. SCR 143 – that was a Senate concurrent resolution – SCR 143 – and, this is directly linked to HB 1902 – this was in total retaliation for what this commission is doing because this is something that came up 2/3rds of the way through the session and it was done in the Senate and SCR 143, SD started off as – it was to urge the federal government to adopt federal policy to prohibit introduction of non-native species to Hawaii. It passed the Senate and we pressured it to be put on House in the Water and Land we got it to die in that committee. HB 1700 – $750,000 that was our comprehensive game management plan monies which we do not know what happened. It was reduced to $250,000 and then no word about it. Jordan Jokiel was trying to work on this. We believe it got corrupted mightily along the way. M. Bartell shared his observation that the House has been very helpful to this commission and the Senate has been very problematic to us. We need to figure out how to work on our state senators. 3. Addressing issues relating to the Endangered Species Act \[ESA\] There is no separate state listing for threatened and endangered species. All threatened and endangered species are listed under the Endangered Species Act and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the regulatory agency. Ike (D. Yoshina) offered to continue to work on this issue with Steve Arrujo on a species specific listing and delisting. Suggestion was made to seek help from the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus which may have a strong impact. Also, invite someone from Fish and Wildlife do a presentation on the critical habitat. UNFINISHED BUSINESS: 10