16 



I just want to say thank you to all of you folks for your state- 

 ments and hopefully we can work together with the council to bring 

 out the best management for the indigenous peoples. 



Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 



Senator Inouye. Mr. Borja, I can assure you that the amend- 

 ments that you have suggested will be given very serious consider- 

 ation. 



I would like to announce that this measure will be subject to a 

 markup, consideration by the committee, full committee, before the 

 July recess which is just about a month from now. At this moment, 

 I have a good feeling that we will have a lot of supporters. That 

 is why I wanted all of you to know what is at stake because I hope 

 the bill is going to pass. If it does pass, Mr. Ebisui is going to have 

 a big tiger on nis back. I just hope that the Hawaiian population 

 will join hands and come forth with proposals that can be sup- 

 ported by the council, supported by the community, and supported 

 by the Governor. I think we can work that out. 



With that, I would like to thank all of you for joining us this 

 morning. Thank you very much Lieutenant Governor and High 

 Chief. 



Now, may I call upon the second panel: first, the distinguished 

 Chairman of the Board, Department of Land and Natural Re- 

 sources of the State of Hawaii, Michael Wilson; the Director of the 

 Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources, Pago Pago, Amer- 

 ican Samoa, High Chief Ufagafa Ray A. Tulafono; and from Kailua- 

 Kona, Buddy Keala; and from Kualapuu, Molokai, Mr. Kelson 

 Poepoe. 



Chairman Wilson, welcome, sir. 



STATEMENT OF MICHAEL WILSON, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD, 

 DEPARTMENT OF LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCES, HONO- 

 LULU, HI 



Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much, Chairman Inouye. Good 

 morning, Senator Akaka, it's good to see you. I'm certainly honored 

 to be testifying before your committee. 



I have submitted testimony on behalf of the Department of Land 

 and Natural Resources, but if I may, I'd like to depart a little bit 

 and speak to you about the importance of this particular bill to our 

 programs here in the State of Hawaii. 



The challenge that we have at the Department of Land and Nat- 

 ural Resources is to do our best to take care of Hawaii's natural 

 resources. The areas that are focused upon in this particular bill 

 are especially important to our task because we really have two dif- 

 ferent ways to try to help the society protect these natural re- 

 sources and instill the idea that has always been common to the 

 Hawaiian community: The idea that we need to conserve and pro- 

 tect. 



One of those two ways is sort of a traditional approach, sort of 

 a western scientific approach. We have many able scientists to help 

 us with that at the Department of Land and Natural Resources, we 

 are studying the scientific background of a particular marine 

 ecosystems and then determining the capacity of that ecosystem 

 and how some of our human activity might be creating a problem. 



