2020-01-14 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – January 14, 2020 AA: So a lot of the hunters that come in here and complain about the grass and it’s true... KS: I never said it wasn’t. AA: \[Laughs\] KS: Yes. It’s a rough walk up there... AA: Um, the other one would be like, um, a lot of man hours and the hunters are volunteering their time, but, for cover your guys’ costs isn’t there grants and stuff like that to help cover. KS: Yeah, we were, um, we were able to get the man hours and the funding to support the project. We did have funding for it – it came from the Pittman- Robertson federal grant, yes... AA: So maybe can find some other resources that maybe can cover more of that time, ah? KS: Yeah, and if the hunters so this – when we came back – the first time around we had about 7 hunters that assisted that for us – I don’t – I’m not sure about Kapapala, um, and most of those were just a onetime shot, um, and so we had to stretch our surveys out across like six or seven days so it took a long time, um, the second time around just because we’d been through it one time and we had a little experience we got 12 hunters that helped us and most of them multiple days, um, a couple of ‘em came for four days so it – I think if we continue to do it we’ll get more volunteers to assist. You know, it’s hard cause we got to do it on a work days, right, I did – the very first time we did it we did do one Saturday-Sunday where we went out to make it available – nobody was available Sunday but we got a couple guys come out on a Saturday, um, so there’s ways, I guess, for us to be a little more available when the hunters are available. But it’s still – it’s a lot of time, um, and it needs to be more time if we want to get information that can be valid, I guess, so, for me that’s – if we can use something like road surveys, which we’ve done in the past – those are going to be mostly, yeah, just trend analysis. You’re not gonna get a density estimate, you’re not gonna say, oh, there’s this many birds on the mountain. We just do it consistently across time – across multiple years – and you can kind of see if the population is going up and down – that’s all it’s for, um, that’s something I’m gonna do a little more research on and also using cameras. We’ve had some success using cameras to estimate sheep and goat densities at Puuwaawaa and so and at Puuanahulu and then hopefully we can do something like for the birds on Mauna Kea. We did get a couple of cameras stolen at Puuwaawaa and Puuanahulu but like one camera per 12