Comm No 0005.01 - GMAC Legislative HIstory - Sept 14 2018

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from the U. S. Geological survey. This is a palila bird nest in the center. I know it's kind of blurry. That's the mother bird feeding the young and they have quite a few of these cameras up in the palila habitat. And within a moment here you're going to see on the lower right, you're going to see what happens to the palila birds. These wild cats are designed to hunt these nests. Here he comes. As soon as the mom leaves... whappa... gone. Okay. I got footage. I got dozens of footage of this... of different cats doing this to the palila. Okay. It's right there. It's eating the birds. Okay. All right. The palila nests on the main trunks of the trees so the rats and cats get right in there. And they watch the parents. The cats watch `cause the grass is so tall now, because the ungulates the level is way down, yuh. So they just hide. They watch the parents where they're flying in and out and as soon as the parents fly off... whoop... they're right in there. Gone. Okay and also... rats has also been a big predator to all forest birds yeah in a way. And the relocation affects... you know when they try to relocate birds, the birds are a natal creature so they only like to hang on at that particular habitat so even when they move a colony somewhere else, eventually they're going to fly back or they die from predation. That's why their success rate is so low, yuh. And of course, weather effects. You know the changing weather. You know... cold conditions. A lot of their habitat was lower in the ranch lands... that have been deforested. Used for cattle. So the only ones that survive are higher up where it's colder so they're more susceptible to those kind of problems. And of... of course the drought affects all life in Hawai'i including the palila. Habitat degradation. This is a lot of what you'll hear from the environmentalists and conservation people. And this is where we come in where if the State actually had a game management plan, you know we wouldn't have a lot of the problems that we have today. And I always say we must also ask ourselves why something so fundamental to every other State is absent in Hawai'i. And that's something I can never answer. Not even myself. I don't know. And you've already heard about carrying capacities and everything. And a lot of habitat degradation happens when unchecked populations in a given area... animals confined to a smaller range... fencing... so you start fencing things off they become more of a problem in that particular area so fencing is not a very efficient way either. And this is one of the biggest problems here. Funding for game management. Okay... that's it. Funding for programs. This is the four major programs under the DLNR, yuh. So this is what they get. Six point five (6.5) million from the federal and two point five (2.5) that just got passed by the House Bill 2012. So out of... so what we get that... and these programs get this. So follow the money. And then hunters, there's eighteen thousand licensed hunters in Hawai'i. Average is probably two thousand dollars a year. I know guys that spend way more than that, especially if you got good dogs and you know all the care and feed and you know all that, so your costs can go up a lot. That's a tune of thirty-six million a year spent on hunting. If hunting goes away, what's going to replace that thirty-six million? Okay this... couple of these screens got cut off because I did this in... on a MAC and I'm playing it on here now. But basically you know... no funding for game management plan. And less slaughter of our game animals. Degradation of our land and conflicts. So the no game management plan, lots of money for other programs, and here it says... do you really know what is going on, in our mountains. And on a... this is where it gets... it gets bad. Okay... we got the aerial shootings... slaughters... and you know, DLNR here locally... I... I'm not here to bash them or anything, they try their best, but you know the conditions and everything... 3