2017-02-17 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes — February 13, 2017 there are people dropping off green waste — they grind it up and someone takes the ground up stuff out again. That was a real good way to spread the disease. The first thing the County did was put up signs everywhere saying, "Don't bring in ohia." I went down there asked, "What do you guys do?" They said, "If we see ohia tell 'em load it back in your truck — don't put ohia in there." So that's the first filter. But the point was that green waste ground up went straight out within an hour sometimes. What they're moving to is grinding it up, wind growing it, letting it heat up, compost, turning it five times over a period of several weeks — at that point everything in that pile will have reached a high temperature — killed the fire ants — killed the coqui frogs — killed the rapid ohia death fungus and then that mulch will be given out. So that's something I think the County stepped up and is really closing one of the ways that this pathogen can move around. And it's not the same as the food composting that's got all the issues on that. It's working in East Hawaii. The West Hawaii composting facility — in West Hawaii it's not gonna be a composting because it's dry. They need the rain here in Hilo to get it moist enough to decompose. Fortunately, West Hawaii — most of what's going into that is palm leaves and stuff from the landscaping — it's not stuff from the forest. So County's done — we talked about the Department of Ag rules — you can't move stuff off unless it's either treated or inspected. We had a summit on rapid ohia death for the legislature in the downtown folks on November 30th. We are having meetings much more aimed at community people, informational morning long symposia on March 18 at U.H. Hilo here on this side — April 1 over on Kona side — West Hawaii community — so I want to invite people to that - it will be all morning long discussing these topics but having more time to go into depth into various topics and there are a bunch of other topics that I deleted out — I went back and revised to make it shorter. There is a website - rapidohiadeath.org we rebuilt the whole thing in September — all the materials and everything is on it - photos, maps. We have a Facebook. People use Facebook to ask questions — we do our best to give an answer the next day when something shows up on Facebook. Other questions? NP: During this same period of time — the last five years where this happened so fast - I've noticed also that the strawberry guava actually are sick and dying as well and there are a lot of places where you'll see whole hillsides — like up at Akaka Falls — up Kulaniapia Falls. I've seen it in quite a few places where whole hillsides of strawberry guava are dying. In my own yard, I have some that just died for no reason at all. First it's defoliation, dead branches and then the plant just keeps dying back — the strawberry guava. I've never seen that before in my life — living in the Islands all my life. Have you noticed that? JB: I've seen periodic defoliation of strawberry guava, especially in the winter — there was quite a bit that we saw — people pointed out. I went up and 23