2019 01-29 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – January 29, 2019 time and it’s hit some roadblocks but along those roadblocks – getting back to Nani’s question was – you guys can look it up – the Habitat Conservations Plan Approval would typically sit with the Endangered Species Recovery Committee – similar to like the State GMAC – they’re appointed individuals but they’re tasked with approving and recommending the habitat conservation plans (HCPs). The Board approves them but I believe the ESRC – the Endangered Species Recovery Committee are the ones that try to vet it and then recommend its approval. So the Puuwaawaa HCP sat in the ESRC’s lap and there’s minutes from those meetings just like any other commission has ‘em – you guys can read up on ‘em and one of those minutes came from one specific commission member there that – they’ve done a lot of work to try to mitigate the take of endangered plants there and some of them are still not all mitigated, of course, they’re out in the open and they will be incidentally eaten. Yet, the expanse of what the State is required to do based on this Commission – on that committee – is also to mitigate for fire risks – so they create all these fenced units where they put all endangered plants that are supposed to be theoretically restored or protected in there – hopefully – to offset the take of sheep eating them elsewhere kind of thing. Well, they’re saying that – well, if you’re going to do that we need a good fire protection plan and part of that fire protection plan was large fire breaks, was perhaps maybe dip tanks – people who hunt Mauna Kea see some of the dip tanks on the Unit G and Unit A areas and maintain those things. So, there was a comment from a commissioner that more hunting increases fire under the guise that perhaps your vehicles or ATVs or whatever drying through tall grass – catalytic converter perhaps causing a brush fire. Personally, I’m not sure there’s a whole lot of data for how often that has happened in the past – I don’t think it happens quite often – but, none the less, these are politically appointed people and they can ask for specific things and that was one of them – so – I don’t know – as fast as it relates to like Kaohe and how the previous testifier was talking – they have dip tanks as well on Kaohe, um, this is the thing that the helicopter will come – dip their bucket in and then dump it over the fire if you ever were to get one. How effective? I don’t know – I’m not a fire fighter but, yeah, they have a conscious idea that the fire is a risk – in some places they take more effort to care about that and then others – maybe not so much – so it’s political always in some fashion. I don’t know – there’s a bunch of other things that I could have answered but I know your previous topic was – the previous testifier was complaining about wasting a lot of money for aerial shooting and that kind of thing. I would like to – if the Commission members don’t know – it’s not – it’s considered wasting a lot of money if it’s not your money cause a lot of the aerial shooting that is done in the State of Hawaii is not paid for by State funds – so they’re paid for by federal funds typically under the Section 6 of the Endangered Species Act sometimes rolled into the State Wildlife Grant Program – they’re just legislatively apportioned to the states – so these funds keep people employed and I don’t know – maybe they have no interest in losing those funds so you just continue to do the same work that you’ve always been doing cause 11