2019 01-29 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – January 29, 2019 KU: This Kean, correct me if I’m wrong – for every money that State uses for eradication – does the federal government match that? RK: How do you look at that – when I said Section 6 \[unclear\] of Endangered Species – that’s legislatively apportioned to the States – I’m not entirely sure how whether or not that is matched – I don’t know about that – but you might be referring to something similar as like Pittman-Robertson funds, which the State will fund the full cost of a project – get an approval to do the project and then the Feds – after the project is done – the Feds will basically reimburse them 75% of the project. Pittman-Robertson funds – as far as I know and this has been asked in the past too – I can’t prove it though but as far as I know are not used toward any eradication-type actions or rather would be prohibited from eradication-type actions – there is one thing, thought, about Pittman-Robertson and federal dollars is that – I mentioned Section 6 – there’s another section of the Endangered Species Act – I’m getting in the weeds here – it’s called Section 7 – Section 7 is basically says that no federal dollars can be used toward anything that is deemed detrimental to the endangered species. This is determined by maybe the Pacific Office of the Fish & Wildlife Service. So when we take State dollars to do a project – say build a water unit on Mauna Kea like the previous testifiers have explained – it’s – those water units are fenced – I can explain why they’re fenced – they’re fenced because that money was matched with federal dollars – the Feds said OK we’re matching you to build this water unit – Section 7 says we cannot use any of the money to anything that would be detrimental to the endangered species – detrimental maybe to the palila. The presence of sheep on that mountain would be deemed detrimental to palila from them so therefore they have to fence that water unit so no sheep can use it but birds can because maybe birds aren’t deemed detrimental yet – so that’s the balance between when someone – the State uses federal funds to do something and when, you know, I mean, there’s been talk to try and say, oh, how come we don’t just use State dollars all by itself, right? Don’t match it – so it just comes with the rules – there’s talk about that too – but you know that takes some influence to get done, so... I don’t know – just trying to be as educational or as layman as I can about it. OLD BUSINESS: Papaikou Community Association – Fishing Community BKK: Thank you, Ryan. Any other questions? Moving on to the Old Business - the Papaikou Community Association – is there anybody from that association here? Teresa, do you know? BKK: We’ll skip over that unless anybody has any comments to make on that because we don’t know too much information as far as what they wanted to share. 16