2014-10-27 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes —October 27, 2014 unsustainable. The rest of the world, of course, they have a little bit bigger area —we're only an island — but of course they pay for their hunting and they have a little less animals, little less density than we do, so maybe hunters need to accept fewer densities for proper game management as well. And of course, talk about some plans —we have you know anything that is important to us — you plan to keep. So we have wildlife conservation plans, we have water resource protection plans, NARS plans, Aina Mauna plans. We have all these great plans and only recently we've been working on a game management plan. So I think we should continue that— it's just that— you know if it's important let's plan for it. [Unclear] sustainable food, of course. Not in the sense that you can have it running all over the place and destroying the forest, obviously it's not sustainable — but sustainable food and that they're here. I don't need to pay for them to come here —we can manage them in some sense. It is an ethical treatment of animals — now we can support cattle ranching [unclear] putting cattle in a fence from pressing `em so they can eat their fat and die or they can be a little bit out in the wild and hunters can, we can gather these things. No panic it's organic, of course everyone's talking about GMO right now. These are wild animals; we don't have to worry about creating pesticides or all this other stuff. We're isolated from disease in Hawaii, so a lot of sheep on the mainland they got problems with pneumonia, they got mad cow. All these kinds of crazy things, but here in Hawaii we're so isolated that we do have an opportunity to protect a pristine resource. It will increase the land value and revenue and diversify our resources on the land. So places like Puuanahulu, places you see Iotta fountain grass — pretty useless to us —what we can and should keep animals there and it will actually increase the value and we can actually do something in a place that is pretty much completely worthless. There's a tourism aspect that's obvious — also the values of hunting connection to the land — connection to things wild which we need more of— if people want to be engaged in conservation and wildlife conservation as a whole you need more people outdoors, more people to understand this — family — of course everyone we learned by some sense and discipline in that— of course you have kids learning hunting ethics — handling a firearm or a bow in an ethical manner and a very responsible manner which is important in today's society. And, of course, like I say more residents outdoors and I took a picture of the Hawaii Hunter Education Class which I'm a volunteer —we're swamped with kids and people wanting to learn to hunt. Every class — it's not like we're never not full — yet our hunting license sales are declining and I can't understand why that is. That's what people say, "Oh, no, they're here to get their fire arm correct, but we really we ask that question all time and - maybe a few five, six people raise their hands — they're actually there to go hunting — it's just that they don't have places to go. They get out there for a little while and we don't have a structure in which support staff— so it's like do a little bit of economic stuff so this is 14