GMAC 2.21.23 final draft minutes

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in 2018 kind of produced a habitat suitability map, if you will, and predicted that deer might be abundant there in the future and, again, rainfall, vegetation height and actually interestingly native vegetative cover were important predictors in the distribution of Axis deer. Goats – slightly different distribution – really prefer, you know, dry arid areas. These areas that show up in the deepest red are kind of the old lava flows on East Maui and, again, predicted to be abundant in the higher elevation areas up Haleakala as well, although that area is fenced so they’re likely not there due to fences. We also have more recently our data from Kauai that we’ve made out distribution maps with – so these are all the hunting units on Kauai and abundance of pigs across there – largely abundant in the wetter valleys in some of the upper reaches of Waimea Canyon and the Alakai Plateau. And then black tailed deer – I found this one pretty interesting that most detections we were seeing out of any of the cameras that we put out throughout that entire study were in Units E2 and E1 and when these animals were introduced to Kauai, fifty some odd years ago they were introduced to mostly non-native mesic dryish forest in Unit A and it seems like from the detections that we were picking up it seems like they have moved in to this wetter, forested area throughout the E2 and E1 units, which is kind of more reminiscent of their habitat from when they were introduced from Oregon – where these animals are. That takes us to kind of current – this is our survey locations across Hawaii Island that we’re trying to get out to so all the little game cameras that you see on this map are the areas that we’ve surveyed so far and so we’re about halfway through our survey on the Big Island right now. All the red areas are the locations that we’re trying to get to over the next few months and get some data there but you can expect similar distribution maps from the work that we’re doing right now and the surveys that we’re doing on island right now so we’ll likely have mouflon, you know, goats, pigs, and sheep, hopefully, if we get enough detections but, yeah, that’s where we are right now in terms of our surveys, I’m happy to answer any questions about it afterwards but in terms of implications from this research. One of our main objectives is just providing a baseline to data set for, you know, for where these animals are and how abundant they are, um, and I heard a few people mention, you know, where they are and these are constant questions that we’re hearing and so if we can provide some kind of data on an island-wide scale to say where they’re most abundant and if that helps, you know, from a game management perspective or a conservation perspective than we’re producing those data projects. Also, we can use this to kind of prioritize where to allocate funds and resources for both game management and conservation. So, if you’re looking at, you know, there’s funding for a new game management area or, something along those lines you can look at this data and say, we can expect a bunch of animals there and so maybe it’s reasonable to designate a new game management area in that area. We’re also looking at minimizing conflict between these different management interventions by identifying low hanging fruit, kind of the no brainers when you look at these maps, and then I hadn’t presented some of the results we’ve gotten in terms of seasonal patterns cause I didn’t think we’d have time today but we’re also looking at this data and trying to address, you know, is there seasonal patterns in the distribution of these animals? Are they in one area at one point in the year – are they moving in different areas at another point in the year – and you can imagine the implications of understanding that kind of species biology when it comes to managing them across these diverse landscapes and so, um, that’s kind of it for today, I’m happy to have a discussion and conversation about our work if anybody has any questions but a huge mahalo to everybody who’s helped out on this project between our DOFAW collaborators, our land partners and all of our UH field techs. But with that, I’ll leave it for discussion or questions. Thanks. 16