2017-08-22 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – August 22, 2017 KS: It will be in September once it goes to the ERSC… But I can email it to all of you guys. The last time I was here we talked about creating a small working group to help us draft this plan and stuff and Tony, Colin Onaka, Alan Nakagawa, and Mark Bartell have been working with me on that plan. I appreciate their help with that. KS: Our intent is not to get anywhere near carrying capacity. Biological – if the populations get to biological carrying capacity we’re in trouble – they’re gonna start having way too much of a negative effect on the other resources that are there and so in the plan that we did write – we will be monitoring the habitat so one of the things that Tony talked about from Montana – we’re gonna be setting up trans-section monitor habitat every – for the first five years – it’s gonna be every year. After that it’ll be maybe every other year. We’ll have trans-sectional. We’ll do vegetation measurements to try to assess how much impact the animals are having on the area – basically our – what we want to do is have a no net loss of native habitat based on how many and so I have no idea how many animals that is – is it a thousand – is it 500 – is it ten thousand? I don’t know – and so I don’t want to say, oh, we want 5,000 animals – we want to manage the animals based on how they’re affecting the habitat that’s available to them. TL: How much of that area you consider native? KS: I don’t know…Edith ran something for me and I forget the numbers… TL: The reason why I ask is that Puuanahulu – this is like maybe ten of fifteen years ago – was designated as a game management area and the reason why it was designated, we were told, is because it was severely degraded. KS: Yes... TL: So being severely degraded how does the native habitat get into the equation? KS: Over there? What do you mean? TL: Well, you brought up native habitat – you said what the impact on native habitat is. I was under the impression based upon the game management and the reason for the game management area being there is that the habitat was severely degraded and what I understand that to mean is that there’s virtually nothing there but trash. KS: I wouldn’t say there’s nothing there but trash – it’s mostly non-native grasslands but there are areas where there’s still some OK forest structures, especially higher up and so, our goal within environmental assessment is we need to get a finding of no significant impact and that doesn’t only impact T 19