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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting <br />Minutes – February 12, 2019 <br /> If you haven’t been up there or even in Hilo it’s been really cold so if <br />somebody was camping there I think they had made a fire – so that’s what – <br />with the report we got. <br /> <br />NP: What size area did the fire spread to? <br /> <br />IC: About 160 acres... <br /> <br />NP: We had a speaker last meeting that Don Fujimoto – he presented the problem <br />of the grass fire fuel without the grazers now and the drought hostilities and <br />wind factors and then right after he presented that it went on Big Island Video <br />News and then there was a fire. <br /> <br />IC: It’s unfortunate right now the mountain is got a lot of dead material on it, you <br />know, can’t tell you if the grass was more or less than it was but if you’re <br />familiar with the Naio Thrips that little bug that introduced about 8 years ago – <br />it came in on some ornamentals – it killed off a lot of the naios – you see a lot <br />of the dead trees on Mauna Kea are from that Naio Thrips.. <br /> <br />NP: That’s fire fuel also is what you’re saying... <br /> <br />IC: It’s the larger, heavier fuels that are probably what you see that looks dead on <br />the mountain – like the heavier wood fuels, yeah, and it’s obviously grasses <br />and the fire weed – we’ve all heard about the fire weed from Mr. Hoefflinger <br />and others but... <br /> <br />NP: But the loss of grazers certainly must have some impact on grass fire fuel. <br /> <br />IC: Probably, I think there’s a lot of things at play there. <br /> <br />NP: What are the herds of Mouflon like now on Kapapala Ranch, on state land? <br /> <br />IC: There’s quite a few Mouflon out there right now... I know I did an aerial survey <br />last spring – I have to get the numbers for you – spring of 2017 and we <br />counted – a direct count of like 400+ animals and then during the, I’m sorry, I <br />did a spring count in 2018 while the, sorry, the lava event was going on? <br />There was the ash stuff – but we were out of the ash flow – and we had <br />another count of like – I think it was 260 animals or something on the ranch <br />proper and then we did the forest strip too – I don’t have the numbers off the <br />top of my head. <br /> <br />NP: Is there a population management going on? <br /> <br />IC: There’s not hunting on the ranch for game mammals. <br /> <br />NP: So nobody’s eradicating those Mouflon? <br />9 <br /> <br /> <br />