2017-11-8 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – November 8, 2017 looking at how much impact we can tolerate in any particular area and. You’re gonna have areas say from real pristine native forest – real important watershed areas, where water’s the primary concern – those areas we don’t want any animals and then there’s gonna be other areas that are really beat up and some areas you’re gonna be able to maintain a fairly numbers of animals. The other thing with a lot of these animals is they range a lot and so they’re moving seasonally up and down the mountain, sideways on the mountain and so quite frankly, in my experience, the hunters do a pretty good job of self-regulating and the animals are moving all the time and so for us to come up with that plan for managing let’s say pigs, you know, pigs don’t read plans and they’re moving all over the place all the time. I think the hunters, quite frankly, in my experience – know more about what’s going on on the mountains and what’s happening with the animals than a lot of the biologists do - they’re up there all the time. I think the hunters are doing their own census so I think a cooperative kind of relationship between hunters and our wildlife management agencies is important. We want to provide as much access as possible. In Oahu, I was a wildlife manager for eighteen years – we’ve opened most of our lands – every bit of land on Oahu that we could – that wasn’t restricted by some other land designation. We opened up to year-round daily hunting to give the hunters as much access as possible. Rather than restricting them artificially to weekends and state holidays or seasonal. We have limited resources for management enforcement. We do the best we can. In my observation, we were having a hard time enforcing and so the guys that were willing to break the rules got a hunt year-round daily and the guys that wanted to follow the rules had to follow seasons. So we opened it up and quite frankly it worked out really well. The hunters are happy with it, I think, when you go from weekends and state holidays to year- round daily you just increase the number of hunting days by 66% so you’ve provided a lot more access to hunters – I don’t think you get more hunters – I don’t think you get more pressure – I think it just spreads it out more. TL: Regarding a statement that was made about the animals range up and down the mountains, Kanalu mentioned that the goat home range was 16.3 square kilometers. Why do you use kilometers and not miles? KS: It is for publication in scientific articles. TL: OK. But you also said that there was a diameter – I understood that to be a 16 square mile radius of animals. Now you said that there’s a diameter of 2.25 miles and I think that should have been radius but assuming it’s the diameter – that’s a circular area – so they’re not really moving far – they may be moving within a circle is what you’re saying. Is that what you’re saying? KS: No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying they have home ranges. 4