2014-10-27 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes —October 27, 2014 1 want to talk a little bit about environmental conservation. You know as a bird watcher and photographer and a guy that likes native species as well, I didn't make it a statement in the beginning of this presentation but I want to now—we hear a lot from people that do one thing: they plant trees, they look at native birds; they work in an aviary restoring birds. We hear from hunters: you only hunt—that's all you do. What I'm trying to say is that I like to do everything. I like doing a lot of things and I try to look at it from a balanced approach to things — so I would hope in the future we could hear from people like that— people who are on both sides of the fence with it. So I do enjoy my native species — I do enjoy endangered species — I've come to learn to love them — so I'm gonna talk a little about environmental conservation — Hawaii is unique. We did evolve in isolation. Of course we have nearly 400 threatened and endangered species. And over half of our Hawaii forest has been lost in the last 200 years as the rainfall is the forest plan says and is the reason why we need to protect them. It captures Hawaii's unique environmental challenges and it preaches the intrinsic value nature not so much the thing that we can sell or catch or kill or eat. It's — they have a value just being there — they're a part of our environment and that's something we need to look at as well — and of course it brings up the idea of preservation versus conservation. Preservation meaning nature has an intrinsic value — you leave it alone, you don't touch it, you preserve it in a sense and conservation meaning the wise use of resources where I can take a few things but I also make sure that we put back in a sustainable way. So we do have slightly a battle between ideals here — in a sense where I believe endangered species are more of a preservation approach — and hunters in a sense —we're trying to look for this conservation type approach. But they do preach a lot of environmental conservation does preach that non-native, invasive, and injurious species — species that injure native or endangered plants and animals are all bad. And that's kind of a notion that I think we need to take into context because of course when the first Polynesians got here they couldn't survive solely on native species. They brought pig, they brought the rat, they brought the dog, they brought all the canoe plants, your ulu — your breadfruit— your taro. All of these things are non-native species as well and they're part of our resources as a people to survive. So I just want to make sure that they're not all bad and the narrative needs to somewhat be adjusted. All I'm gonna say — I'll make a little bold statement now— I enjoy all the environmental conservation — I think they do great work— but I see a problem — and this is just anecdotal from me — forest protection, restoration, endangered species is currently domestically and economically unsustainable. They're already seeing challenges with funding. We're having to route around ways — try to get more federal dollars for our stuff because it's very difficult—we have increasing fenced areas, increasing lands that we need to protect but no way to fund them. 8