2018-09-24 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – September 24, 2018 - Eco Systems are being managed by a handful of people and the public is not involved in what goes on in these ecosystems nor in the management of these ecosystems and it’s creating quite a bit of angst in a lot of places – it has caused us to lose thousands of acres of recreation on the Big Island – we’ve lost Mauna Kea so far – there are thousands of acres that they keep taking from us almost on a daily basis. Eradications go on without concern to the public and these are all decisions that are made by a handful of people and you and I don’t have anything to say about it and what he’s saying is that when you get into ecosystem management it is not – it is the public that should be telling what we want to do with our ecosystems – what are the choices we want to have for our lands and the public needs to be involved rather than a bunch of people with a bunch of letters after their name – so it’s an interesting discussion – this discussion has been going on now for the last three years throughout the world, actually, people are getting a little distressed and concerned about environmentalism in the sense that it’s become pretty radical and there is a concern so this is one of those things that you’re gonna be dealing with – ecosystem management is how they manage Hawaii. They have a small area of plants here but they’ll take 1,000 acres to protect them and within that 1,000 acres the number of animals that are allowed resident in that 1,000 acres is what? Does anybody know? Zero... Do you know how they came up with that zero number? Anybody? I was shocked when I heard it and we actually heard it from Paul Bankoh and the reason why it \[unclear\] zero is that there’s no argument – nobody’s deciding, oh, maybe we can do five, oh, we can do seven. Zero is the number – so that’s one of the concerns and the other concern that we have and H.B. 104 – which I sent to you all – H. B. 104 is a bill that we turned in, in 2013 and it’s time that we do it again in my opinion so I’d like to get you folks to look at it and I want to bring it up at our next meeting if there’s any changes that you’d like to make to it or you can see that you would like to make to it – but what we’re asking with H.B. 104 is that our game was in our State Constitution – it’s been in our State Constitution from the start. In 1978 or ’79 when we had that Constitutional Convention they tried to take game animals out of the Constitution and they were able to get it out of the written Constitution but they weren’t able to ratify it and in 1979, as you know, we got sued and we lost Mauna Kea and some of you think I’m a conspiracy guy but it just seems to pat, actually. This thing has been a design and we would like to get our game animals – we have H.C.R. – a House Concurrent Resolution which was passed unanimously that says that our game animals have standing in Hawaii. Our fishing has standing in Hawaii. We have value with our game. And we would like to see that actually back in our Constitution and that’s what H.B. 104 does. It’s very simple – it just says that we would like to have our game animals back in it – it’s just a matter of two words – game animals – that we want to put back in the Constitution. So that’s what H.B. 104 is all about. GH: Chair I have a question, this is Grayson. 30