2017-08-22 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – August 22, 2017 next part that I’ll talk about – abundance estimation – will help us hopefully quantify that more on lamb / ewe ratios and recruitment and fecundity and all of that. We put out this last – in June we put out about 100 cameras randomly across the mauka section between Puuanahulu and Puuwaawaa and they’re all programmed to take a picture every 15 minutes, I think, and so all the pictures, all the cameras are programmed to take a picture at the same time, which is essentially a snap shot of the area. I’m working in conjunction with Brigham Young University from all of this research in Utah and so they’re gonna do the statistical analysis for us to help us understand about how many animals we have in the area. We can use that information not just for sheep and goats but for anything that we get pictures of – so I’m pretty hopeful for that – hopefully we’ll have some results on that by the end of the year. We’re gonna start pulling the cameras out here in the next month or so and we’ll move them down to the makai section so we can start getting estimates for that area as well. That’s all I have. All of that ties into the things that we’re trying to do in the HCP – I’ll take any questions you have – I know you have questions about when we can start doing certain things, you know, like we won’t do certain things until the fences are done. So we’ve discussed it and I think there are some actions that we can do before the eight or ten years is up – as long as we do it in an area where a fence has gone up. Does that make sense? So like and in areas that are far enough away from fences – we’re thinking – I think it’s 1.2 kilometers was kind of a buffer around the area was what they came up with based on home range sizes and so basically that same 1 point or 2.4 combination – I forget what it is exactly – but we can do some actions that far away from proposed exclosures, um, but the biggest action – the one I’m getting the most kick back from – from our other - my co- workers – was augmentation – so we intend to bring animals from other areas and introduce them into Puuwaawaa and Puuanahulu and so that probably won’t happen until all the fences are in – any kind of addition of animals into an area – that aren’t animals that are already there or, you know, right now we can move animals in the area – from one area to another – I mean, that’s fine – but if I want to bring ‘em in from Hawaiian Homes or something like that – that probably – that specifically probably won’t happen till all the fences are in – but other actions that we do – so other – we intend to plant cover plots – to plant forage and better feed plots – some of those things can happen before the ten years is up – but that big one that everybody has been so like wow you want to bring animals in – that won’t happen until the ten years – until all the fences are in I should say. TL: What about water? KS: We’re already doing things with water in there – we already do water guzzler maintenance and adding more water – we could do that maybe before the ten years is up. 16