2019 01-29 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – January 29, 2019 FINANCIAL REPORT: BKK: Teresa Nakama moved for approval of the Finance report as submitted. Seconded by George Donev and carried unanimously by voice vote. STATEMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC ON AGENDA ITEMS – Statements from the public will be taken throughout the meeting BKK: And now we’re gonna move to the statements from the public. Is there anybody in the public that wants to discuss anything on our agenda? And, of course, if we bring up any topics – you’re more than welcome to come up and discuss and ask questions as well. Proceeding to our presentations we have Mr. Don Fujimoto. PRESENTATION Don Fujimoto – Bird Hunting DF: My name’s Don Fujimoto – I live in Waikoloa. What I want to talk to you about tonight is a State program that has been going on for many, many, many years and that’s the eradication of sheep on Mauna Kea. And that’s to protect the mamani tree to bring back the palila population. It’s not working – but a more serious issue is the fire fuel load that’s on Mauna Kea. It’s huge, but, OK, you know, last year we had a fire in Waikoloa – it started on Mamalahoa Highway – and thanks to the wind direction it didn’t hit Waikoloa Village – but the winds were blowing but they weren’t especially strong – and the fire kind of moved – casually – down toward Puuanahulu. Took out 18,000 acres of land. Overall in the State 34,000 acres burned so the Waikoloa fire was 53% of the State total. That represented .6 percent of the total land in the State and that’s a really important number – I’ll get back to that later and explain why – attachment one of the handout – if you’ve got it – is an article that was published in the Honolulu Star Advertiser in December and the reason I’m bringing it up is because it’s an article about research on the fire danger on the Big Island done by a researcher at the University of Hawaii – the reason most people don’t know about it – is the papers here did not publish that article. And the article basically says that we are looking in the coming years a 375% increase in fire danger. OK, so, we’ve had a lot of fires recently – we’ve been lucky in that they haven’t taken lives but we’re looking at a lot more danger in the future. Back in October I helped the DLNR do a bird count on Mauna Kea – we ran a bunch of transects – I worked a number of days with those people – but what I experienced really shocked me and that’s the amount of grass that’s growing on the mountain. If you look at attachment 2 in my handout – you’ll see some of the pictures. Now, the first picture is of the Kaohe Restoration Area and the grasses there are really thick – they’re pasture grasses and they’re three to four feet tall, OK. Now the Kaohe 2