2014-10-27 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes —October 27, 2014 came out— it addresses all kinds of hiking — even looked into public- private partnerships with the Hawaii Forest and Trail maybe — and all these other environmental types — but it doesn't address hunting in any sense again — so, you know, we continue to get neglected — but that's OK — that's why we're here. We have a grazing management plan — it addresses the cattle to keep the fine fields down so we don't get a fire — you can take care of all native plants but if one big fire comes through you end up with Puuanahulu — a sea of fountain grass and no native plants. And of course they did mention a lot of critical habitat areas — to my knowledge I haven't seen a map that shows the critical habitat areas of Puuwaawaa. I'm trying to look for that. It might be something interesting to see it to understand there may be more — there may be bigger areas they're trying to propose or maybe they're already done and we just don't' know about it. We can't get away from this — I know a lot of people don't like to see it but— as a hunter and someone that cares for all wildlife — including the roaches and everything , you know, animals do get stuck in fences and it is just not something humane which we should be looking at. And they do get treated — our animals get treated as second rate pests — to a lot of us they're resources, to the community that wants to protect endangered plants — they're treated as pests so it's slightly, maybe disrespectful in a sense. Then — I'm just going through examples or things that—you know questions that maybe we should ask ourselves as a community. So I'm back to the Rainfall is the Forest Plan —we rate the priority watersheds in green and we also have a map of the areas of all of the projects that are supposed to happen. I don't know if anyone notices anything interesting about this map — but if you particularly look here and here — you have a bunch of projects that total to about a little over a million and a half dollars, I believe, that are not particularly in the priority watersheds. So we created this whole plan with public funds and without your input so much — and here we are spending it on a palila habitat— hena hena fences here is for the endangered species that are inside of the caves and things like that— so if the water was such an important aspect and the watershed was so important as the media portrays — you would think we would prioritize our money on our watersheds — but we're spending upwards of over a million dollars on other things. So, just something to think about. I think it's a miss-allocation of funds potentially — and maybe this will be something a public process would not have had that. I'll talk a little bit about game management so, you know, we got to manage our animals — if we let them go crazy they're gonna eat the forest and stuff. I totally agree with an environmental view on that. There's no doubt. So we have this thing called game management but we have a difference in opinion. Environmental conservation [unclear] use — this is just some quotes I took around from people that tell me stuff or you know 12