2017-11-8 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – November 8, 2017 forward and I know that you on the HCP and I don’t want to hammer you on the HCP about, you know, some of the things, but he did bring up something tonight that I think is important and that is that you mentioned that that place will never be at carrying capacity when we were here... TL: What’s the definition of carrying capacity if that’s the case cause there’s a new term that I heard about a year or so ago and it’s called impact capacity, which I think is probably a more relevant term for us anyway is, you know, how much game can you have in an area before it does significant damage, you know, to where we have to go in and do something and what I would like to see – I don’t know about we – but what I would like to see too and I know that this is not your kuleana mostly but we’ve been trying to get a project going in a watershed area to see what it is and actually in 1996 we had an agreement to do that, ah, \[unclear\] from the \[unclear\] that we had was to – how much game is in the forest, what is the impact on the forest, and what happens when you bring hunters in and that was never done as far as I know. It’s something that we would like to see in the watershed in particular – or I would like to see in the watershed – but Puuwaawaa is the most popular hunting probably on this island for people who like to hunt sheep and goats and other things – which is why I think this HCP is really important, if we ever get going. Does anybody else have any comments...? KS: Let me just real quick – I do have a couple other things I was gonna share... TL: OK. All right... KS: So we had questions I think from Theresa in Kona about habitat conditions within the forest bird sanctuary and outside of it within fenced units and outside of it, um, so I’m just gonna read what Elliott Parsons – the Puuwaawaa manager – out there – just some of his insights – which is pretty similar to some of the stuff I said – unfortunately we haven’t quantified it so we haven’t gone out and taken measurements and all that – so most of it’s visual – but he said the Waihou fence unit – so below the forest bird sanctuary is 204 acres – the fence was put in in 2004. The condition: forest recovery is progressing fairly rapidly since fencing and ungulate removal. Mamane are coming up everywhere inside the fence on their own so there’s a native seed bank – so they didn’t do any out-planting, right, those mamane came up on their own. Ohia reproduction has increased mostly on logs inside. Kolea are recruiting around parent plants. Koa are coming up in some places but these may be clone off stems from another tree and not new individuals – they’ve planted over 5,000 koa in Waihou and they have grown significantly – some were planted in 2012 and now are over 10’ tall. You can see them coming up from the puu. Issues with excluding cattle, sheep, goats and pigs – banana poka has increased inside the fenced unit cause cattle do like to eat that – so we got some of the good and now we’re gonna go a little bit of the bad, yeah? Also, grasses can be higher inside the fence than outside – 16