Comm No 0005.01 - GMAC Legislative HIstory - Sept 14 2018

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it's... this is insanity what they're doing, really. » What... what was... what was that, that you just showed? » That's piles of sheep that were just shot. And removed. Okay. A big problem here is invasive weeds. Since the ungulates have been removed, this area here hasn't had any sheep or goats in probably twenty to thirty years, and as you can see the landscape has not recovered. This used to be cattle at one time. And now it's all fireweed. And fireweed is toxic to cattle and it's spread all into Waiki'i Ranch and everything so eventually it's going to spread all over and the quality of ranch pasture land is way down because of this. And the cattle will die from this. Goat and sheep love this. There was a ten year study done in PTA that they fenced off one area, left the ungulates in and fenced off another area and took... removed all the ungulates and in ten years, there was a twenty-five (25.0) percent increase in growth without the ungulates. So everybody's like oh... great. When they got down there and they analyzed it, twenty-four point nine (24.9) percent was invasive weeds. One point on (1.1) percent was Native. And the side that had the ungulates had zero invasive weeds. So you get rid of the animal, the weeds are going to take over. And that's the ecosystem that they're creating. Unless you go in there now with poisons and stuff like that. Each one of these plants has thirty thousand seeds on it. Another big problem. The wild cats. This is tracks that... I go bird hunting and then they're following me. And then we get to the fencing. Millions of dollars of fencing, and this is what happens to them. Okay. Unchecked fences for miles. Funded by our tax dollars. Carnage. Hundreds of animals shot. And left to rot. I blurred it a little just so it's not... there's a row of animals here. About thirty of them along a fence. They drove them up against a fence line and shot them all and left them there. These animals are trapped in a lava field, a five mile square in the impact area so they'll die of starvation. This animal here... as you look down the road there you'll see carcasses all the way down. And this is Mazie Hirono funded this fence here and she's proud of it but I wish she would see the results of what's happening to the animals. This is like a death trap. This is like a gill net in the ocean. Just trapping animals every day. And then of course, the mass graves and the end game. Babies starving when their moms are shot by helicopters. So now DLNR wants to eradicate our pua'a. Our pigs, our sustenance, our culture. And people mention this already in the Hawai'i Revised Statutes that aerial eradications of any type or any aerial shooting is illegal. DLNR response is that they can do it when it's proper and effective. Well, how they got around that is through administrative rule and how many of you heard or had any input on this? I have asked old timers for the last thirty years `cause they've been shooting from helicopters for thirty years and nobody ever heard of anything. So through the administrative rule all they got to do is go to the Board... Land and Natural Resources, the Attorney General, wham, bam it's done and they can do whatever they want. They don't have to follow the... their own laws. Okay, the key word in... in the endangered species act is the taking. Okay. And why this word is so important is `cause the taking was to harass, harm and everything, right? This is what they used to do the Palila versus DLNR. They manipulated these words because... a sheep doesn't eat a... a bird. So it wasn't a direct effect, yuh. So they used the word the taking. A taking is very important because this is what's happened... this is what the DLNR is doing right now with the palila bird. Okay... report to Congress... okay, this is a over flights affects... okay... this is public law. Also the U. S. Fish and Wildlife also has their own... for endangered species and 4