2014-10-27 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes —October 27, 2014 Chair Lodge: We met with Colonel Petersen today and we also met with Mr. Mabry as well. Mr. Mabry is the new enforcement guy at Pohakuloa similar to a DOCARE employee. They're hiring a biologist as well to start doing game management up there at Pohakuloa. And those of you who are here for the concern about the eradication number— originally the number that Tony and I were given, and Ike, we were all there at that meeting —was about 300 animals they thought might be in those paddocks there — or those fenced areas. And they took out 1,274 animals. It's a shocking number— how it got to be that number— and the colonel; at least in our conversation...No animals were recovered. All were shot and left there. And so it's wasted essentially.. But anyway, so there are other reports that we got for the different things that might have been going on where they shooting from the helicopter and he said no they didn't. He also said that of the animals that were left behind — they told us that they were gonna do a census — and they didn't have a chance to complete that census on the animals that were outside of these fenced areas. They've put out a request to the hunting community that they would like to have the hunting community involved in what goes on there at Pohakuloa — they'd like to have you involved in the management of that game, they'd like to have - and there's another area on the east side- it has a number of animals in it — they'd like to move those animals out— and they'd like to move it out by pushing them out. They don't want to go through this eradication scheme anymore — they want to get these animals out in the open and then manage it. So this is an opportunity, you know, they've made the offer, it's an opportunity for us to take them up on it and see if they live up to it, you know, if they do, we have a future with them that— for managing this wildlife up there. But basically, we had a pretty good meeting today with Brian Mabry was game warden. We're gonna start this in January. They expect to have a full game management plan they said, hopefully, within a year. They're right now following state license and bag limits. For hunting is gonna be up —they're gonna be also working on the managing both mammals and birds. They're looking for volunteers for population counts to get a census — they're looking for feedback from hunters to their game management staff to improve the situation up there. They're also looking for volunteers to help —they have some guzzards up there that they want volunteers to help fill and repair. They also talked about a hunting club up there, as well as in —this has already been requested by everybody here — anybody who has to go [unclear] your rifle you have to go up 16 miles on the weekend and they were trying to see about establishing some sort of a rifle range for hunters and for people up there in the middle of the island. So whether they're able to even do something like that, I don't know. But these are the plans they would like to promote so far and that's what we got out of our meeting today. And as far as the eradication up there — U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service drove that whole thing — and as Tony was talking about here — the fact that these —when you talk about game mammals 21