2014-03-24 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – March 24, 2014 renewable resource that we need to mange in perpetuity for us, our kids, our grandkids and their grandkids. Right? It forces them to make the call and whether this is – they’re gonna treat a pig like a coqui frog or are they gonna treat it like a renewable resource. And I think fundamentally they have yet to ante up – nobody in DLNR – William Aila included – Lisa Hadway included – everybody included will not give you a straight answer on whether they consider these game animals are a renewable resource or not. And I think what we need to do and continue to focus on is to force the state to have that discussion, right? We need to force them to have that discussion. And I think we need to force senators to have that discussion and congress people to have that discussion so we know who’s friend and who’s foe. And we’ve done 100,000 times better than we did last year, right, and we need to continue to get better at the legislative session. But a game management plan will force the state to have this conversation. Is the pig a coqui frog and a fire ant, which is an invasive species that nobody wants, or is it a renewable resource that people count on to feed their families? Right? And right now they have not declared what it is. W. Camara: Right. M. Bartell: And we just got to keep pushing the ball down that road, right? And the reason William Aila won’t have a conversation about a game management plan is for that a reason. And the reason Lisa Hadway won’t have a conversation about that is for that reason, right? And what we need to do is we need to get our senators and our congress people to have that conversation to say the pig, the goat, the sheep, the axis deer, the game birds, are not invasive species. They’re a renewable resource that we as a state need to manage on behalf and for the benefit of the people of this state. And a game management plan does that. So with all the dialogue and all the rancor around it – I mean you still can’t get anybody at DLNR to say what’s the pig, right? W. Camara: Right. M. Bartell: And we just got to keep pushing on that issue, right? D. Yoshina: \[Unclear – then comes to mic\] …to identify those animals as game animals. And the other thing that we have to I think be careful of is to not to debate when DLNR folks tell us that it’s the federal government forcing them to do something, you know, because I think it’s just a red herring to pull us away from the fact that, or those facts that Mark (Bartell) has talked about. However, there is this question for clarification needed to really try to ascertain what the federal requirements – the parameters of federal requirements are for the state and it’s my opinion that many times the federal laws as they are applied or misapplied in the state really cause us some problems. So as Mark says we’ve got to talk to congressmen. We can’t –we should be talking to the Congressmen because there are types of laws that are often held up as an example to why the state cannot do something… 10