2017-07-25 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 you would say, maybe, the best place for them is in these more coastal sites or maybe that was just marginal habitat for them – we don’t know – we do know that at the coastal site on Kauai – where palila bones have been found – there were no less than I think five or six – I think there were a total of seven birds that were somewhat similar to palila – two were actually very close – relatives, clearly, just based on the bones and the rest were seed eating birds that had very heavy beaks for crushing and extracting seeds so there were a lot of seed eating birds back then – palila is the last of the seed eaters that we have today in the main islands – there are two close relatives – one on Laysan, one on Nihoa Island. The Nihoa and Laysan finches are actually pretty close relatives of palila – you can see similarities all the time even in the way they feed, but they are different species TL: I believe there were 1300 or 1400 birds when this lawsuit happened in 1979? PB: It may have been in the low thousands. TL: The eradication started essentially in 1980. In 1981, the population went from 1300 to over 7,000. PB: Around 6,000 is about as high as we figure they got during the last thirty years, - you’re in the ball park. TL: And that was the year of the eradication. They get rid of a couple of sheep and we get 6,000 birds. But then the following year, it dropped to like 3300 and then it dropped again? PB: It just dropped like a lead balloon. TL: We have a bunch of hunters here. You have to understand that they don’t agree that the sheep had a lot to do with what was going on with the palila and that there are a lot of other things that we should be doing maybe for the palila – other than wiping off the sheep – and I want to get back to that future of the palila and the sheep and I’d like to get your thoughts. We have a gentleman here from Pohakuloa. Pohakuloa is the only place that we have any data as to how much rainfall is collected on that side of the island. There used to be sites all over the place but nobody’s collecting them – Pohakuloa is all that was left. Up until just a few years ago, you were able to get data about the rain and the palila numbers. I’d like to get your thoughts why do we have wild fluctuation with the palila? PB: Let me begin by saying that it sounds like a simple task – tell me how many palila there are, but, if each of you individually had that task you might approach it in somewhat different ways but ultimately you’re gonna go out in the field and you’re gonna be counting birds. In any given day you might see 8