2018-09-24 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – September 24, 2018 attention to what’s going on – there’s trash bins up there right now and now for a change you can go up there with a hunting license and you can practice. But that is not a gun range. What we are looking at here is a public range which would be open to anybody and we’ve looked in a number of different areas. There are two areas right now that are viable for us. One of them is the original Puuanahulu range, which is in Kona. The Mayor has directed Parks and Rec. to join the working group and to be a working group member so they’re now taking the lead on this gun range – so that took us about three or four months to get that – but now that the Parks and Rec. is involved in this – they’ve gone in with both feet and they’re very interested in getting this done – so that is a real encouragement to me, anyway... Oh... ?: \[Unclear\] TL: One of the things we want to do, too, is to make sure I stay on that working group – and we need to get you probably on that working group. But those that have – and if anybody wants to see this – I have some extra copies here that are available to anybody who wants them. Last year the military offered us an opportunity to establish a gun range in their area – this is Marquez – and he was real excited about doing this and working with the County and giving him some area across the street – where they’re not able to use it right now – it’s in critical habitat, I mean, that’s the designation is critical habitat – but that’s the political boundary – not really a biological boundary, which, and we have some reference here from Fish & Wildlife Service and Fish & Wildlife Service told us point blank – there are no palila in the area and there won’t be and that whatever we wanted to do with the shooting range would be doable in either area. But the military wasn’t wanting to get into this battle on critical habitat and maybe somebody stepped in and said hey, what are you doing - let’s not do this – they have their own environmental issues – so then we just moved across the mountain – you guys are familiar with Puukaohe – it’s that big hill as you’re just east of Mauna Kea State Park. There’s flat land area there – it’s got some issue that we need to be concerned about – there’s a lot of water courses there – lead and water don’t mix so there are concerns and considerations, but it is an ideal area to have a gun range provided you meet some of these areas – now Parks is concerned about this water – so I don’t know what the mitigation might be for that but that is something that we’re working on and it’s about one mile east of Mauna Kea State Park – it’s relatively accessible to everybody. You can have ranges that can go out to 600 or 1,000 yards if that ever gets into be one of our particular venues that are gonna be available to the public, but the idea of this range is to be a gun range that you could take your five year old, your ten year old, your seven year old, your wife – whoever – you don’t have to have a hunting license. You don’t have to have any requirement except that you have a firearm that you would like to go out and practice with and that’s what the purpose of our Commission on this gun range and that’s the purpose that Parks is looking at and we are working on this area right now and I’ll leave this out here for 25