2017-08-22 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – August 22, 2017 and things and it’s just no conducive to people working and just saying, “Hey, I got a day off – I’m gonna go hunt.” You know, you gotta wait, you gotta plan so it’s more organization for our hunters too. So I’ve seen a lot of people just back off or they start booking trips elsewhere because they figure, oh, well, if I’m gonna go through all that, you know, I can go to Montana, Wyoming or New Zealand of wherever. I think that would help us out a lot. And I think would help us too when we go to the legislature or when we talk about things cause we can show that, this is what we’ve been talking about, the numbers are down, the amount of hunters is down or the hunters are up but the success is down and so forth. It gives figures and something real in our hands instead of just everybody talking in different directions about what they think is happening in particular areas. And I think that’s something that’s doable by the department – it may cost a little more or have to assign somebody a little more time to put something like that together but I think that would be helpful for us all around. The social tolerance is interesting - it’s the number of animals a landowner or the public will allow in an area. I thought that was really interesting. We don’t have a lot of landowners, there’s private land that you can hunt but for us it’s public land but I just thought of social tolerance – if the environmental community – let’s say they see a bunch of goats on the down side of Puuanahulu, Puuwaawaa, “Oh, we gotta get these goats out of here – there’s goats everywhere. This falls right under social tolerance – if people drive by they don’t really know – they see stuff like that and they’ll assume that’s a linear. I don’t know how to address, but I think that really harms us. It really does. When people see stuff like that not knowing – so how do we educate the public as well on what is and what is not – the Hawaiian Homes Lands parcels is a classic example of that, yeah, people see hundreds of sheep and, “Oh, you know, what are you guys complaining about?” I constantly hear this stuff – just talking casually with people and I get tired of explaining it already – I just say whatever – OK. So the next one is in order to properly manage any wildlife – biologists and managers must have a good understanding of all the animals, research biologists and the rest of us to learn all we can about animal and management. And then the objectives include: habitat needs for the individual species and evaluate the impacts of the variety of land use practices. Study and explain the population dynamics of wildlife on a varying habitat and environmental conditions – so I think more stuff like that too to educate the hunters as well. And I started thinking the other day how we just get a hunting license and we go hunt and if we don’t pay attention to anything we don’t know jack. So how do we make hunters pay attention more or understand more? I mean, I know we take a hunter safety class and that’s it but, I mean, it should be part of getting our license every year that maybe there’s a pamphlet that comes with it or there’s something that you have to look through and answer a few questions, you know, sign it off that you read it and then you get your hunting license and you can to it on line or whatever – just so that people kind of have an idea of what’s going on for that hunting year or whatever. I don’t know if it’s a global but it’s just stuff that I’m throwing out 6