2025-09-16 GMAC Minutes Final Draft

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between 2007 and 2014, and they were most severed on leeward Hawaii Island. Because of these massive drought affects the Palila population declined dramatically. Now they are really being hit by these small population dynamics. So, basically if there is any level of predation or anything else that's preventing us from bouncing back now that we've had wetter conditions over these last several years. But with all of this possible drought refugia was located, so, we know this one area seems to be pretty resistant to drought. NOTE: A drought refugium is a localized area that retains higher levels of water or moisture during a drought, providing a habitat for plants and animals when surrounding areas are dry and inhospitable. So, that's really important because, that lines up directly with that previous study where the Palila hotspot was. So not only have we found the Palila hotspot, we also found the area that seems to be the most resistant to drought. So that really highlights the area that's really important one to be conserving in the future. So that brings us to, what is DOFAW doing to reverse the decline of the Palila and what are our future actions and what we would like to get implemented on the mountain. So, the big one that has been in progress for many, many years is forest restoration. So, in 2022 up till September of 2025, these are the number of trees we've replanted. 2022 particularly the Mauna Kea forestry reforestation project planted 31,000 trees, and about 29,000 trees, in 2023...a little over 21,000 in 2024 and so far in 2025 we're up to 18,000 trees planted and the last two years, the planting of trees have sifted a little bit...so most of the efforts were focus on the Pu'u Mali and the Kahoe restoration areas, we're now shifting a lot of restoration effort to that skyline road area, especially by Pu'u Mana'o to try to increase the size of that drought refuge area and hopefully get higher Mamane recruit and survival rates. The other thing that has really expanded over the last few years is predator's control, so, now Mauna Kea Forest Restoration Project and the East Hawaii Wildlife Program are operating over 1,000 cat traps on the mountain, these are in operation in all times, except during dog training season and the bird season. Because a lot of these traps are capable of killing dogs...and we don't want to hinder, or we don't want to have anybody lose their prized hunting dogs...companion in the cat control efforts. We also put in about 1,000 rat and mongoose level traps and this basically covers the whole area of Mamane and Na'io forest below the Palila area. ...below the Palila hotspot in an effort to control rats. And this is mostly to address some of these small population dynamics concerns. You know if we can save just a handful of Palila from getting killed by these nonnative predators it can go a long way in helping the population rebound. So, from 2022 to 2025 Mauna Kea Restoration Project has removed 312 cats from Mauna Kea, 396 mongooses, at least 106 rats, and 251 mice. I say at least for those two species, because the traps we are using for those are self-re-setting traps that just 13