2015-11-16 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii County Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes —November 16, 2015 GPS collars to put on sheep and goats, which has been approved. Placing those collars on the animals we provide the data on mortality rates and mortality causes, reproductive rates in home range will help determine the population growth. Develop partnerships with other agencies to receive animals that they don't want. Improve habitat, plant food plots — such as kukui trees in Puuanahulu that volunteers planted. Improve the quality of goat population. Provide mineral and forest supplementation to improve the quality of the animals that are being harvested. Maintaining, construct water units and then improve habitat. Draft a game mammal management plan that would be approved by the DLNR and update it every five years, that would go along with the HCP and to do that, form a hunter working group which would be a sub- committee that would work together with the Puuwaawaa Advisory Council that already exists. Questions by Comm issioners/members and Answers by DOFAW staff: • Do you have wild dog packs running in that area? How do you deal with that? SF: We would definitely implement a predator -control program and yes, there are wild dogs and it is a problem. • Do you have any theories of why the sheep population is so low? Could it be drought? SF: No idea, could be water or eating too much fireweed. The GPS collars provide updates two times a day and then if the animal dies it will send an email immediately with the GPS coordinate of where it died so the idea is that we will retrieve the animal quickly and be able to do a necropsy on it to find out why it died. • Have Rumen studies been done on sheep to suggest they actually are detriment to the endangered species on the list? SF: The study was done a few years ago by DOFAW staff working with partners. Data is available. Need to determine what is causing a low sheep population in Puuwaawaa. 0 What happens when a new endangered species is added to the HCP list? SF What we're trying to do is make sure we consider all the candidates so that we don't run into that problem.