2017-06-27 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – June 27, 2017 follow-up. As soon as we do we’ll try and post what we can so we can get the public involved because I think the public is going to want to be a part of that resolution hearing to have their input. Along that light, we’ve also talked to various other groups and organizations for to support the Big Island Labor Alliance. We were invited to discuss the shooting range with them. We are looking for support and we’re looking for support from anybody who wanted to give us support there – and on site selection. ii. Site Selection – Commissioner Jim O’Keefe JO: I don’t have a formal report – we’ve had several meetings with a number of the stakeholders – we had one at the DLNR offices with – we had Pohakuloa’s Garrison Commander Lt. Col. Marquez and his Sgt. Major and we had Cindy Evans – Representative Evans – from Kona. A number of folks from the state legislature – Cindy Evans from the legislature, county council, mayor and governor’s representatives there – a few others – a number of the shooting sports communities – DLNR’s new DOCARE Chief – Robert Farrell – had expressed some confidence that we could work through getting some changes to be able to use some of the facilities that have been historically used for shooting by the public and everybody’s pretty familiar with 16 mile - some of the other sites around the island – Manuka... And we’ve been looking at those as a possibility and one of the challenges of finding any site is always – can it be done safely, can it be done with community support and especially with neighbors’ support – is it environmentally safe – we’ve had subsequent meetings at DLNR. Joey and I and several others looked at some of the maps for the sites with overlays of endangered plant species, rainfall – things like that – and there may be something there that we can work through to do perhaps a small pop-up range in a fairly short time but a lot of investigation needs to go into that. I’ve also been contacted by Stanley Mendez . And he mentioned that there’s some county property up above Kaohe – Paauilo side that may be possible. I was up there today taking a look around and taking a look at it on Google Earth to see, you know, we have quite a number of houses – not too far away – may present some challenges but we need to find out more about it to see if that’s a possibility cause county does have some properties and if we have the county’s support on these kind of things that may be another alternative. My goal is to have more ranges, not just one. We have a county shotgun range here and when we were talking earlier about the 4-H and the opportunities for kids and the shooting sports – we already have started a shooting sports program for junior high, high school, and college age students – the scholastic shooting clays program – we actually have one team – we’re looking to build more teams that we can use the county range for shot and sports. One of the things that is really good about the shooting sports and youth is it provides not just discipline and focus – it also provides opportunities for scholarships. 16