2018-11-13 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – November 13, 2018 NP: Right, it’s very green now... Right. KS: No, but I’ mean, what you’re asking about – an extra water unit is not unreasonable and it’s something that we have discussed – so... TL: I want to get back to carrying capacity with you for a moment... Number one you jumped the gun on your answer when I asked you what the carrying capacity is – that’s a number – it’s out there – there’s an impact capacity – you know, what level of animals can live in an area – you can call that carrying capacity if you want. What level of animals are you comfortable with in that area – do you know any of those numbers? KS: Do I know how many animals I’m comfortable with in the area? Well... One second I’m just gonna look up an email I just got. OK. So this is from – I said we put cameras in the area in 2017 and 2018 trying to estimate the number of animals – basically I won’t go into all the details but the first time we did it – the estimate was high – between 12 and 1600 animals. Kinda, I think it was on the higher end of that and I told the researchers at the time – I thought that was high – and this was only for those of you who know the area – this is only for Puuanahulu and Puuwaawaa mauka of the road. It’s probably about 60,000 acres total. TL: Fifty thousand in the upper area? KS: About 60,000. Six zero – sixty thousand. So, but that’s the two areas combined. I told them I thought it was high. They went back and they ran the numbers a little differently because what they realized was they were counting sheep that were further than – we picked a landmark in the picture that was supposed between 30 and 50 meters from the camera and that way you could kinda get an idea of the area that is being captured by the camera and then the animals that are in front of that landmark – you could get a density based on the area but they were picking animals or counting animals that were past the landmark which is why they had a h8igher density. So they re-ran the numbers to include only the animals in front of the landmark l- if that makes sense – so the new numbers for 2017 was 850 confidence interval lower end 715 higher in 984. This year we did it again... TN: I’m sorry - this is Teresa - that’s sheep or goats? KS: These are only sheep. So mauka they’re mostly sheep – there are a few goats but not many and we did not have enough observations in the cameras to get an estimate of goats for mauka. So I anticipate... ?: So you counting Puuanahulu too, mauka? 7