2017-11-8 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – November 8, 2017 TN: I go back to my question from our last meeting – if an area is pristine – the ecology of the area is balanced and when man gets in there they unbalance the area. If an area is pristine before man got there – why do you need to fence it off and save it from animals if the balance of this ecosystem is in balance? See? It doesn’t make sense for a pristine area to be fenced off cause then it becomes unbalanced. You take an area – like Hakalau Forest – it is no longer Hakalau Forest. The canopy’s gone – the forest is not intact and that’s when they got in there – before they got there the area was pristine – so all of your plans and talk of destruction or the animals destroying a forest – have animals destroyed a pristine area? DS: Yes. They do it all the time – that’s what they did to Hakalau... TN: No, the area is pristine. DS: No, Hakalau was not pristine. \[Discussion\] TL: We’re here talking about management and there are principles of game management. Suzanne Case and Governor Ige during his campaign advocated for Game Management. How do you folks view HCR 22 as it relates to managing game for sustainability? We want to see a sustainable future for our game in Hawaii. DS: We’re trying to manage a good public hunting program. TL: What does that mean public hunting program? DS: Opportunities for folks that want to go hunting. TL: What about game to go hunt? WJC: They don’t care about that. DS: I think actually – I think we do and I think we do provide quite a bit of opportunity. We’ve added areas, you know, on Oahu – I did the math and we had added 11,000 acres of hunting area. I would like to add more. We would like to buy more areas. We’re looking at areas on this island where we can get more areas available for hunting. TL: What about working with the areas that you have that are available for hunting? 8