2017-07-25 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 TL: It’s fine to get an opinion from you? PB: I can give an opinion if I think I’m qualified. I’ll give you an opinion on what I think is good for palila or bad for palila but there’s a lot I wouldn’t know – there’s just many unknowns. TN: Over these 25 years that you’ve been doing research – has the other agency come to you for your opinion? PB: Yes. TN: And so if these agencies have come to you for their opinion than we can come to you for your opinion also? PB: We have to come to an understanding of what my opinion is going to be based on. I can’t give you just my personal opinion as a sort of a hunch – I mean, I’m constrained to give you an opinion based on some research. DY: If somehow there was funding for research on the impact of the sheep or on the palila, then a study could be conducted to do that? PB: Somebody probably would be willing to do that study – but I would point out that most people who are gonna be funding things comes from government sources. Yeah, I mean, there are private sources of money for endangered species research but generally it’s public funding. People are going to say well what research has already happened. The first thing that would occur in any research project is let’s look at – what has happened – so they go to Paul Scowcroft’s research and they say here’s Jon Giffin’s research and here’s what we know from those time periods and under those circumstances and then they would maybe build on that. I don’t think it’s an unexplored issue. It may not be as thoroughly explored as you might wish – be careful about encouraging a research to do more – because that’s what we love to do more research DY: So you’re telling me to go study the existing stuff first. PB: I would examine that and if you see deficiencies, then that’s something that maybe somebody could address and say OK that study did such and such but now we have other ideas that could be explored. DY: So I have a related question – as it relates to endangered species – they’re always comes a point especially with vertebrates that there is discussion 14