2014-09-15 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – September 15, 2014 We have our hunting areas that have been designated as different units. We have our hunter check stations. We have game biologists who are assisting and implementing. We have our license sales. We have 183D. We have a whole broad brush of mandates to take care of and hunting is one of those mandates. D. Yoshina: How do we integrate all of that? How do we integrate, as an example? Excuse me, but how do we integrate our hunting policies with our environmental protection policies. Because, you know, right on that space, when you build a fence, you have in fact interrupted the migratory habits of the mammals. And that has consequence. So it seems that we should have a bigger approach to all of this and much of the frustration that people are feeling is over that. We’re not saying you’re wrong, at least I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just saying somewhere along the line somebody has to integrate all this stuff – we should have a comprehensive, integrated, resource management plan, rather than what I have come to understand to be our resource management plan in the State of Hawaii, which is sectoral, it’s divisive, it make an enemy of the environmentalists, which I detest highly because all my life I’ve been an environmentist But you know, it bothers me that we’re at this stage… L. Hadway: Well indeed… D Yoshina: ….fifty years after the state became a state. You know we’re at this point where our policies don’t make much sense and people are beginning to see that. And so, you know, I’m sorry, but you know DLNR catches it on the nose. We don’t trust you guys, why I say we generally, you know. Or we don’t trust government, we don’t do this, so… L. Hadway: So if I may… D. Yoshina: Can’t we solve the problem? L. Hadway: I don’t think we’re going to solve it tonight. D. Yoshina: I know. L. Hadway: I am in front of you because I’m interested in doing that, OK? D. Yoshina: So what can we do? L. Hadway: And we can actually work together in the an effective way. Sunshine Law isn’t always the easiest way to do that. I will tell you that if we had sub-committees of people who could actually look at maps and come up with, I would think, a facilitative process would being viable but there also is the need for willingness to understand some of the things that we also have to live with. And this is the endangered species capital of the world and I will tell you that some of the biggest struggles I make – I go to national conferences talking about 25