2017-08-22 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – August 22, 2017 exclosures but that’s just one small area so like the Puuanahulu side that infrastructure doesn’t exist. TL: You said the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service wanted to have bigger fences. KS: Uh-huh. TL: Right. Is this Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) – my understanding was that with this conservation plan you could now go to the Feds for money. Is that correct? KS: What it does is it allows us to comply to our state laws. If we want to go the FEDs for money, we need to do a biological opinion – it is a – so we’ve had the conversations with them already and they do know that once this HCP is done we will then consult with them for a biological opinion so that we can use federal funding to do the game management actions that we want to do and they are aware and they, I mean, the personnel changes all the time but right now the people that we’re talking with, it sounds like they’re on board with using the HCP as their – basically – as their backbone for the biological opinion. So all the conclusions and actions that we come out of our HCP with hopefully, would come out of their biological opinion. So the HCP allows us to comply with our state laws and then now we can use state funds. Cause right now there’s kind of a gray area whether we can use state funds to do things for game management or not. But once we do have the HCP then, yes, we can use state funds to do game management outside of the exclosures. We will then need the biological opinion from the Fish & Wildlife Service. I was just talking to Edith about that this morning and so, um, I told her once we get the HCP we should approach them, I mean, within the year, maybe two years – because I think we all see how long it’s taken just the HCP to get written – so to get a biological opinion is probably gonna take some time too. And as long as we get that before Phase 1 is done and hopefully sooner than that. TL: Why did this take this long? KS: Cause I don’t know what I’m doing... No, ah, why did it take so long – it’s the first time that this has ever been done and I don’t know if it will ever be done again – the idea was that it was gonna be a template for future districts in other areas to be able to manage game like this, but, there’s just so many – it’s the why did it take so long is the first time it’s ever been done – nobody’s ever done it like this, I mean, we’re the state asking the state for a permit to take endangered species, nobody’s ever done that. So that’s why it’s taken so long. 25