2015-03-16 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes—March 16,2015 Now we have to go through the cultural people because there are some house foundations and things of that nature, but if we can go in there with the help of volunteers to go in there put markers out and let's incorporate those areas that haven't been hunted. That area right there probably what? Twenty years? Pretty close. And a lot of people think that that's a pot of gold but really what it has been is a corridor for the sheep coming up from the impact area to move to the Hilo side in 1 thru 4 or to move out into the flats 7 thru 9. And also, with the colonel's request to shut down the road hunting through the hunting areas is—we might see a calming effect. The military's gonna come in there and train from time-to-time. There's not a lot we can do to control animals, but if we can do everything that we can to calm these animals and a lot of these areas aren't used for active training, They're not even used for blank fire in most cases: 1, 4, is basically—we might have two training events a year so if we can calm the animals in that area — limit traffic—we may have to look at putting some hunting parking areas on the Mauna Loa side of those deeper areas, a point A to point B, but no hunt or drops in-between, so a lot of this stuff is just fresh for us. So we're looking at that, where are the sheep coming from? In the last two months we've been getting some sheep come up from the impact area up through the old Area 18. So they're coming through the puu from Mauna Loa side and this one herd had anywhere from three to four hundred and that herd, right now, is able to move from 7 to the quarry and even across over to the airfield. And this is the first time that we've actually had any, anything for them to feed on in probably the last three or four years due to drought. We're seeing a lot of change going on right now, we're getting trail cams out there. We're getting out there boots on the ground. I'll spend all weekend going out there and just see where the animals are. And then there's other environmental affects on the mammal population and that's feral dogs. And right now we're in the pupping season and the Areas 5 and 6 and the quarry Areas are big pupping Areas. So I've seen a reduction of the animals in that area so they're moving around and here in about two months we're gonna see if they're gonna repopulate those areas. There's a lot of things that we're looking at but I think that the biggest two things is if we can squeeze out every acre that's available for mammal and then to look at calming the animals and when we do open up hunting, let's say for example if we want to hunt the 14, 15, 16 Area— if we don't open up the mauka side of Keeaumoku —the animals are just going to move to Keaaumoku and the hunters are going to have to stop at that boundary. 10