2014-03-24 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – March 24, 2014 W. Camara: Another Resolution…SCR143 Chair Sylvester: ….SCR143 That one is – that one is really dangerous, scary. Cause if you read it, it looks like somebody frantically put that together cause it talks about coqui frogs and then it talks about our game animals and then in general it talks about non-native species – so in my opposition testimony is so what’s next – can we bring livestock to Hawai’i because that’s not a native species – and that’s what this thing would do – and the federal they wanted to create a federal program of whatever to prevent non-native – the importation of non-native species to Hawai’i and then a part talks about insects and animals and everything so I thought that was pretty scary because now we got people that import animals for 4-H, for livestock purposes: meat, dairies, you know, whatever. Without them thinking that this is the kind of thing that’s gonna be affected if you start doing stuff like this – so… W. Camara: That one’s gonna get heard tomorrow… Chair Sylvester: Yeah. That one’s getting heard tomorrow. And it’s just a joint resolution but – still yet – it shows you that lawmakers – their frame of mind – if they’re being bombarded by you know aggravated environmentalists because we have some bills in the legislature that they’re trying to act like they’re helping and doing something – I don’t know – it just doesn’t make sense. When you read those kind of bills it’s just haste - HCR98 was the House one. SCR143 is the senate version. W. Camara: SCR. I think it’s 143… Chair Sylvester: OK. Why don’t you talk a little about that, Tom (Lodge) T. Lodge: That HCR 98 – you know for years environmental community, DLNR, your friends over at the Fish and Wildlife Service have all been talking about that the pigs that came to Hawai’i were very very small pigs and weren’t these pigs that we see in the forest today. And it turns out that there’s a lot of evidence to the contrary and William Aila for the first time actually changed his testimony to acknowledge that – that these pigs now are not little bitty, tiny pigs that came over. And I think that’s kind of significant because we’ve been hammering them on that and there’s been a lot of testimony that’s gone in over the last few months to them about pigs and evidence of how big these pigs were. And you know the fact that when Cook came here and so there’re only Polynesian pigs, so to speak, when Cook got here – they were selling pigs for one fathom…for a nail and for fish hooks and other things - barrel steel – they would measure the barrel steel and whatever the length of that pig was from its snout to the end of its tail that’s how much steel that they got. And so those are not little 80 pound pigs. So they’re starting to acknowledge and they’re starting to change their – I don’t think 5