2014-11-17 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes — November 17, 2014 Ms. Tanimoto left her written summary and asked that it be circulated to the commission members. W. Camara said that he would review and contact her before the January meeting. Chair Lodge welcomed Robert Shook who testified in Kona. RS: My name is Robert Shook — traditional Hawaiian name. OK. I want to talk about the animals and the way they're being treated here. I have a plan that uses them as a resource and I notice here in Kona there's not much jobs unless you create a job. There's not much opportunities for these kids unless you create opportunities. But the one thing in Kona that everybody mistook is — their resources. Everybody looks at land. They don't look at what else the land comes with. I took the time to put something together about the animals here — the animals here it's not their fault that they're here — they're here — they were brought here for one special reason — somebody came along and changed their name from cattle to feral cattle or invasive species. So because they changed the name to invasive — now they kill these animals. I'm gonna give you a small story about Ikua Purdy. Ikua Purdy was the cowboy that broke all the records and what not — well he rustled a few cattles in his day to feed his people because they were starving — OK? They caught him and they were going to hang him as a cattle rustler. And they hanged a few people along the way — cattle rustling. Today we call `em "invasive." We shoot these cows and we leave `em on the side of the road like they're nothing. But just a little while ago we were hanging people because of `em. So you guys got to look at both sides of these laws, yeah, and cultural gatherings. Anyway, I look at it like this, yeah, Department of Hawaiian Homelands pays three cowboys — the cowboys pay Department of Homelands $40.00 a head of cattle that they catch on DHHL land, OK? According to Mike Robinson, he waived this fee of $40.00, which in six months they had caught something like 1,400 head of cattle. Now waiving the fees, denying the DHHL $56,000 that they were owed. OK? But the cowboys went and sold this meat at an average of $225.00 per cow, if you average `em out — 1,200 pound cow, 400 pound cow. They made $315,000 dollars. And then they got waived $56,000 dollars and this been going on since the beginning of time. None of this money goes to any cultural thing, any burial thing, anything at all. The money is lost. So I've come up with this plan — if we, as Aha Moku, we volunteer to protect these animals — we volunteer to get a "catch & release," we volunteer to be the managers of them and what not. You don't have to pay us. We do this because this is our way of life. We going live off of this. These animals going provide education for the future, they going provide jobs. I just showed you how much money in a short period of time this small amount of people with what is called, you know, this is what we have, yeah? You can add `em up, please do it on a calculator and what not. I have a plan to feed everybody over here and we have other homesteads at other areas. We can provide food for `em, we can create 11