2020-01-14 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – January 14, 2020 time that it took us to do the surveys basically at Kapapala in the fall of 2018 we needed 128 staff hours and 48 hours of volunteers so in order for us to use the dogs we needed volunteer hunters and so they needed to give us their time to do the surveys. So for Kapapala it was 128 hours in the fall for staff, 48 hours for volunteers. In the spring it was 124 hours for staff, 48 hours for volunteers. For us in the fall, it was 300 hours of staff and 80 hours of volunteers and then I don’t have the spring numbers – I couldn’t find my records – so I’m sorry I don’t have the spring numbers. It was very similar to what it was in the fall and then this last year when we did the fall again for us we had a lot more hunter participation, which his good, but we still had – we had 12 different hunters show up – several of them came on multiple days and basically it was a full day for a hunter to come and volunteer with us – we were using about 8 per hunter. So it was a lot of time and it was a lot of time for our staff too. We had to bring staff in from other places to support us, you know, cause our wildlife section is so small and so saying that the numbers that we got weren’t as strong as we wanted and yet we would probably have to double or more – increase our manpower and volunteer time in order to get information that was statistically valid. It’s a big effort - that’s all I’m basically trying to say, um, but there was information that we got from this that I think that kind of peeks my interest and that I’m interested in finding out more and so we’ll go to the next slide... The slide after is the one that has the numbers you guys want but this one is just comparing with and without dogs, um, the density estimates between Kapapala Ranch and Mauna Kea. One thing that the research did – so we had contract – this was contracted out to the University of Hawaii a post-doc – one of the things that he did that I want clarification from him – for – was that he lumped the two methods together on the side there – that total is combined with dogs and without dogs – together – so I don’t – oh, no, that’s later, but I don’t understand why he combined them. To me we should do one or the other, um, unfortunately, I haven’t been able to sit down and talk to him about that yet, um, if you do notice, though, on Mauna Kea with dogs – that blue in the middle – is a higher density estimate compared to Kapapala Ranch and those air bars do not overlap – so there is a difference in population size – that’s – I mean – being on the ground you should already know that – but the numbers do support that – that there’s more birds on Mauna Kea than there are in Kapapala and then this is the one that everybody wants to know – so this is only for urkels, right, we didn’t do anything for anything else because we don’t have enough observations to do it so for erkles in the area that we surveyed, um, in Kapapala for the fall the estimate was just under 2,000 – so 1,932 – with those confidence intervals 1149 and 3249 – and then in the spring the estimate was 9,627. So about 2,000 in the fall and about 9,600 birds in the spring. And on Mauna Kea it was very similar - similar as in – fall was less, spring was more. Mauna Kea was about 6, 899 urkels in the survey area in the fall – and 14,356 in the survey area in the spring. And so... I’m interested – why are there more birds in the spring than there are in the fall? Again, for Kapapala the numbers are actually pretty good - that would suggest that’s that because the comparatives 8