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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-07-25 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 Game Management Advisory Commission County of Hawai’i Minutes Meeting Date: Tuesday, July 25, 2017 Time: 6:46 p.m. Place: Hawai’i County Building – Council Chambers I. CALL TO ORDER/ROLL CALL: Meeting was called to order at 6:46 pm by Chairperson Tom Lodge. Willie-Joe Camara, District 1 – here Dwayne “Ike” Yoshina, District 2 – here District 3 – vacant Naniloa Poglen, District 4 - here Thomas H. Lodge, District 5 - here Kenneth “Kalani” DeCoito, District 6 - here Bronsten-Glen “Kalei” Kossow, District 7 - absent Teresa Nakama, District 8 – here District 9 - vacant Quorum established ALSO PRRESENT: Malia Hall, Corporation Counsel Donna Urban-Higuchi, Executive Assistant to Mayor Kim APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Mr. Dwayne Yoshina moved for approval of the June 27, 2017 meeting. Seconded by Willie-Joe Camara and carried unanimously by voice vote. GUESTS: Paul Banko, US Geological Survey Biological Resource Division, presentation on bird conservation. STATEMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC: Chairperson Tom Lodge asked for comments from the public on current, past or future agenda items. 1 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 5. COMMUNICATIONS a) Budget Report to the Commission 2017-2018 was filed. b) Presentation by Paul Banko, US Geological Survey Biological Resources Division to share with us aspects of Conservation Bird Biology and success with palila and others. PB: My introduction may go a little long because it’s important for me to explain to you who I am and my background. I graduated from Hilo High in 1968. I got my bachelor’s degree in zoology and botany at the University of Washington in 1972 and then between ’72 and 1988, I was basically doing a lot of small time jobs for the National Park Service, temporary employment. Then I started graduate school and I’m kind of a slow kind of person so it took me a long, long time to get my PhD. My PhD was on the nene goose – biology – and mostly just focused on Maui and the Big Island and you probably can remember at that time nene were not nearly as common as they are now so it took me a while to collect enough data and then I was employed – believe it or not – I got a job working with the US Fish & Wildlife Service in 1988 and you may or may not recall that there was government reorganization in 1996. Our research group in the US Fish & Wildlife Service was put into the US Geological Survey so it’s just one of those things where you have no control over where you’re put by Congress but they decided that this reorganization was a necessary thing. I wanted to spend a little bit of time explaining how I got into wildlife biology – my dad, Winston Banko, was assigned to Hawaii in 1965 and his assignment was to figure out what is going on... PB: My dad’s assignment in Hawaii was to figure out what is going on with these Hawaiian birds that seem to be going extinct at a great rate. It was general and broad, but at that time, he was exactly one half of the workforce for US Fish & Wildlife Service in the Pacific. He and one other guy were US Fish & Wildlife Service in Hawaii and the Pacific. When my dad arrived on the job, there were literally a handful of people who could really tell him very much about any native birds. So he talked to those people but soon discovered that the heyday of Hawaiian bird biology was actually back in the 1890s – there was a lot of activity by British and American and other nationalities exploring in science in the 1890s. State of the art science was collecting specimens of new species – that was very important work and continues to be important today. Although in terms of vertebrates, most vertebrates globally are already identified – just occasionally you’ll hear of a new mammal discovered somewhere in South East Asia. But, the age of species discovery for vertebrates is largely over and the attention now is mostly on invertebrates – insects and spiders – there’s still a long way to go with that. He read the old literature from the 1890s and began to formulate some ideas. He was supposed to figure out what is going on with Hawaiian birds and there’s really nobody there to guide him in that enterprise – all the naturalists from the 2 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 1890s and a little bit later had moved on or had passed on. He checked with museums – looked at museum specimen labels – so every time a naturalist shot a bird as a specimen – they would record where they were and when they shot it and then it would go into a museum and some of these specimens were many, many decades old by the time he began to look into ‘em and see what he could learn just from the little piece of paper that was attached to the specimen. For example, in Kaumana – O’o has been collected back let’s say in the 1880s, he began to compile a catalogue of where Hawaiian birds had been collected and when and by whom and that began him on the path to going to these places now. At that point sixty to seventy to eighty to even 100 years later and say well is this species there now? And most of the time he would find, they’re not. But a lot of his time was just spent educating himself on where are the birds, what they look like, what they sound like, how do I detect them and how do I connect the historical abundance and distribution of these birds with what we see today. He spent a lot of time at the Bishop Museum, for example, looking at specimens, reading accounts, talking to whoever he could about Hawaiian birds, Hawaiian plants and Hawaiian insects. And then it occurred to him – he was getting a little bit ancy because he’d come out as a wildlife biologist and wanted to be in the field – not so much in the museum – and that led him to come up with an idea that, you know, everybody knows what a crow is – or almost everybody does – so why don’t I talk to the residents of the island about where are alala – the Hawaiian crow. That was kind of his first species to really focus on and at the time we didn’t call it citizen science – but that’s what it was. PB: He started looking at alala about 1969. At that point, I was in college so I wasn’t close on his heels at that point, but when I graduated with my bachelor’s in 1972, I joined him in the field. I came back to Hawaii without really any plan of my own for employment but he needed help. At that time his budget was really, really tiny. He didn’t have an official vehicle or anything, you know, it was just sort of a boot strap operation so for room and board, I was his assistant for a while and it was very gratifying for me – it was great to have him as my mentor – his modus operandi was to contact anybody who would talk to him – landowners, ranchers, cowboys, hunters – basically anybody who would go into the forest or who had been in the forest and ask them what is your recollection of alala when you were growing up – what is your recollection now – where would you advise me to go to find them. And slowly, this little network of information began to grow and he met very helpful people – George and Margaret Schattauer were particularly useful to him and very, very accommodating and helpful in pointing him here and there to talk to people about crows and find crows on his own. And I joined him in that and that’s how I got the bug – the wildlife bug – we’re going out – we’re finding alala – finding nests and learning what we can about their behavior and distribution... TL: What was the population like of the alala in 1969? 3 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 PB: We knew of about 65 individuals at that time and we knew there were some more but they were just in places we couldn’t easily get to. People would say, maybe a couple of years ago I knew a pair that nested over here. If we could get access to that area we’d go and check it out and find a nest or not. But at that time, it was very clear to us that things were unraveling for alala. The sixty-five known birds and only relatively maybe a dozen at most – other birds – that we never personally could account for but we had some confidence they were there. He said, wow, you know, this is pretty amazing – here is a species of crow which worldwide are relatively adaptable birds and this is all we can account for. And so this was one of my early lessons in credibility was that we observed first hand in true local experience of residents and it was very for us to be believed by official people because they would say you’re just not looking hard enough, you gotta go out and look and we continued to look, but clearly the evidence bore us out and within just ten or less years it was clear to everybody. In fact, there are not very many alala left. During that time, we started the captive breeding of alala or at least the captive population of alala. It was by accident – there was no plan for a captive population. It was simply when my dad would go out and this was just before I joined him in the field. In 1971, he found two young alala perched on logs or low down in the trees and he walked right up to them and they didn’t move. He thought, they must be sick or something – they don’t look injured – there was a nest nearby. He knew that they had come from the nest – and decided maybe what I need to do is I’ll grab ‘em – take ‘em to a vet – see if there’s anything wrong with them. But once you take a young bird like that it’s not that easy to give it back to its parents. But he thought they were basically done for at that point – which they well may have been – and it turned out that both of them had avian malaria, one of them died not long after being taken into captivity – it was decided since he had no means of keeping these birds or breeding them – he sent them back to the mainland at the request of his home office where they had a very large captive breeding program for Sandhill Cranes and Black Footed Ferrets in Pawtuxet, Maryland. The first two alala went back there simply because, while there was no provision for them in captivity here and then by the time I joined them – the next field season – we found three birds in the same kind of situation. Three young birds in different areas all on the Kona side and they were perched, yu’d just walk right up to them like I could walk right up to you. It was very startling and a little bit disturbing, - we took them into captivity as well under the assumption that they are also sick with malaria. There wasn’t any money in Pawtuxet for an alala program and so they said, do what you can – figure out something there in Hawaii. It turned out that the National Park Service decided to build some aviaries. At that point, the state became quite interested in breeding them. The birds were transferred to Pohakuloa and you probably know the rest of the story – then the flock was moved to Maui eventually and now it’s under management both on the Big Island and Maui. 4 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 Currently, there are 112 birds in captivity divided between the two islands so the program has grown but it’s been quite slow to get there. TL: There are a lot of people that love the alala...this episode that we had recently -really pained many people. There’s quite a bit of criticism about that program and it brings me to wonder, certain animals - at a certain point in their existence are going to need constant care and it sounds to me like the alala is one of those species. If you want to perpetuate this species – it will have to be in aviary or where the public can come and see them number one – when they go out in the wild you’re not going to find them number one. As a scientist you know how to look for them, you can’t find them – people aren’t gonna see them, but it’s a way to keep these things going on and on and I’m just wondering if that wouldn’t be a better path for the success of this bird – if you want to keep it around forever – it’s virtually extinct right now? PB: Sure. Well it is extinct in the wild. And as I say there’s maybe 112 birds in captivity. Your point is well taken and I think it hits on a real common issue or a central issue in conservation biology, which a lot of conservation biology focuses on rare and endangered species that’s almost by definition that’s what it’s about – it’s not exclusively about the rare species but it’s largely and historically has been and my dad’s - own professional history started with the Trumpeter Swan in southwestern Montana. He knew all about working with very rare species – where at the time the Alaska population wasn’t well known and it wasn’t known how large it was and it was just thought, at least in the contiguous forty-eight states. TL: They went from almost zero to like 13 or 14. PB: Yes. His colleagues were working on Whooping Cranes which were down to the last dozen or even less. He spent a very short period of time on the Desert Big Horn Game Range in Nevada. He was working with endangered species. And the common thread with endangered species work is they’re endangered for a number of reasons. One of the things that predisposes a species to becoming rare is that one, they’re not a prolific breeders. Their natural breeding system is on the slow end of the scale compared to rabbits or rats or things that we recognize are kind of fast breeders. Many of them are specialists either in terms of what their habitat requirements are or their food requirements – now the alala doesn’t quite fit that mode, I wouldn’t call it real specialized and I wouldn’t call it particularly slow breeder but its social system is, I think, contributes a little bit to its rarity, because they’re an ohana bird. The basic social unit is the family. We don’t know what they might have – how they might have behaved and occurred two hundred years ago when there presumably were a lot. By the time we caught up with them, it was clear that they were very family oriented. The young stay with the parents for 5 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 at least a year – kind of learning the ropes but staying on the edge of the parents’ territory – very deferential to the parents – don’t get in the way – probably help with the upbringing of their younger siblings and they’re produced year by year until they find their own territory and acquire a mate. If you drive that kind of a population down to low levels, you may expect that it’s gonna take a long time for things to build up. A lot of these species are extremely slow in terms of our lifespan. It wouldn’t surprise me at all that if we could fast forward the movie we might say, oh, the alala finally starts to get going maybe in fifty or sixty years from now. You can also reflect on the nene – the nene has been a conservation focus in Hawaii since the 1930s. Around 1935 the Territorial Legislature told the game commission at that time – to do their first approach with nene and distribute birds that they had already in captivity from people like Herbert Shipman and others – there were several individuals and families who had tame or semi-captive nene. These were distributed to wealthy landowners and people who they thought would take an interest in them and adopt this species for restoration. It was not a bad idea - it just didn’t really take off and it wasn’t, of course, until the late or about 1950 that birds were sent to England. Also Herbert Shipman’s flock became kind of the real focal point for conservation of nene and the real turning point for nene. They had terrible success in breeding them in captivity and which for a goose it’s not that hard to breed a goose in captivity. *But nene they just had tremendous issues getting production from the captive birds and probably it was because they were so inbreed that it just led to a high rate of infertility and low hatchability of eggs so – what happened was seven individual nene – either in the form of eggs or goslings or a few adults that hunters simply encountered by chance and there may have been a more concerted effort to look for more birds but my recollection is that hunters were involved at least in one or two instances of bringing in this wild stock – the last of the wild stock or some of the last of it and that really revitalized the captive breeding program and so, you know, it kind of got over this genetic bottleneck and things really began to take off. And now it’s quite simple and relatively easy to breed nene in captivity but it was a genetic problem, but again, it took decades, really of just lots of hard work by a lot of people to move this thing from very close to zero to maybe a few dozen and then, you know, maybe a few hundred and after a while they were able to release a lot of nene – you may remember the big releases in the 1960s especially where hundreds of birds were released annually in various places on the Big Island and also on Maui at Haleakala. So your point is though, that there are some species that are going to be – many species, actually, that are gonna be extremely challenging to bring back into any kind of abundance and some of them I’m sure we’re gonna find can’t be done. The po’ouli on Maui is an example that was discovered in 1972 as a species at least by western science – we don’t have any information as to whether Hawaiians knew of \[unclear\] there are I believe bones of po’ouli elsewhere on Maui that suggest that it was more widespread before western times... 6 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 TL: How do you find these bones? PB: It was Joan Aidem, an amateur archaeologist from Molokai. She was at the Mo’omomi Dunes and noticed bones sticking out of the petrified sand and started to take interest in that and then pointed experts toward it. They said, that it’s amazing. It was just a treasure trove of ancient Hawaiian bird bones in these sand deposits but they also collect in the openings of lava tubes where there’s a sky light – birds fly in and can’t get out – maybe get disoriented – flightless birds. In Hawaii, there was about 8 species of goose- sized ducks that became flightless as well as flightless geese, in fact, the nene was probably the only native goose – that could fly. There was a very large version of the nene – that was clearly flightless based on the bones of its wings and it couldn’t possibly have flown. It was found just on the Big Island. This is another wrinkle in the whole odyssey of being involved in Hawaiian wildlife. If you start with certain assumptions and what you can read and what people will tell you – it’s really only a slice of the picture when somebody discovers all of a sudden. Here’s all these bones of species we know that prior to the arrival of western culture of Captain Cook – about half of the Hawaiian bird species had already gone extinct probably because of the rat that came along with the first Polynesians who settled the islands. Also, some of the flightless birds probably tasted really good – really easy to catch – that could have explained some of the mortality. One just never know what discovery is going to completely shift your opinion about things so with this - the knowledge of the prehistoric bird community which was twice as big as it was when Captain Cook arrived. My dad became very interested in reading the literature and learning about the birds that had become extinct just in the last couple hundred years. He had this perspective and he handed that off to me of the history and then when this prehistory came along – it’s like boy this changes everything about so many preconceptions we’ve had about Hawaiian birds and habitats and so forth. What good is that knowledge now – let’s say in the case of palila. We know historically that palila is just found at the higher elevations on Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa on western Mauna Loa and Hualalai, but bones of palila have been found in coastal sites on Kauai and O’ahu. They have not been found on Maui which is kind of surprising but – and it doesn’t mean they weren’t there. A lot of bird bones have been found and discovered on Maui and none of them so far have been palila. So in efforts to conserve palila – you have to keep in mind, this bird evolved with these upper elevations as part of their habitat. They also had a lot of these very interesting lower coastal elevations that they lived in and so are we gonna be able to restore them there? Not likely, because where would you do that? The coastal areas are pretty well-developed and we don’t really know what the coastal forest vegetation looked like even a few hundred years ago, much less maybe a thousand years ago. One of the lessons is that where you find birds today – is not necessarily the best place for them in an evolutionary sense. If you could get in your time machine and go back – 7 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 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 a dozen – you might count a dozen – you might count 20 – but what is the population really? It’s a very simple kind of concept – how many are there? And it’s the first question anybody ever asks of any endangered species – how many are there? And, yet, it is one of the most difficult to answer in any kind of credible way simply because they don’t line up for you? It just doesn’t happen. It’s not my particular area of expertise but there are people that also work at our field station that, that’s mostly what they think about – is how do we conduct credible surveys where there’s really two things we want: one is we would love to know how many are there and, yet, we know we’ll never know exactly what that is, just because the methods are simply too crude – it’s just too hard – and we also like to know – even if we don’t know exactly how many there are – if we’re consistent in our methods of doing the survey year-to-year – can we tell are they going up, are they going flat or are they going down, I mean, that’s really critical to know. My response is – I can never tell you how many birds there really are – I can tell you how many we estimate and have to bring in our statistician to go into great detail as to here’s how we generate the numbers. But just to walk through a scenario – we’re gonna do a palila count right now – where I’m sitting is a station and 150 meters down that way is another station and so on every 150 meters we’re gonna stop right here and we’re gonna set our timer for six minutes – and we’re just gonna be listening and I’m gonna be watching and turning around and trying to see what I can see and I’m going to be noting every palila that I detect and for that matter every other amakihi, elepaio, what have you – I’m recording every bird that I can. So right away you can say, well, that sounds good but obviously how do you keep from double counting. A bird is flying around, it’s moving, a bird is calling, you can’t even see it but you know it’s a palila. That’s the first level of complications is you never know. The best you can do is you train people to detect birds at a high level of accuracy and more importantly you get them together before you do the count and you calibrate and you say, we’re gonna do a silent count – everybody do their six minute count – we’re all standing right here – and then we compare notes and say, Tom, you counted six palila – the rest of us only got two. So you may be correct with your six but, it’s kind of herd mentality – it’s like well we’re all really just saying two because we think they were moving around. TL: Do you do this over a period of days like a week in the same transect? PB: Yes. It’s usually two people that go out. Usually, we’re training a person – you have one experienced person usually teamed up with a less experienced person and they both do the count. But it’s mostly – for the secondary person it’s just more training and building confidence in their abilities. We will go out roughly at dawn and proceed until about 11:00 in the morning. Typically, an individual will do anywhere from 12 to 15 of these stations six minutes duration and then just walking in between the stations. And then that transect 9 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 will be done again probably the next day by a different person – different team – and then we’ll pool those results. TN: What are the factors involved in the declining of the bird population? If there are factors – did you have to prioritize those factors that could be causing the declining of these various species of Hawaiian birds? PB: It’s one thing to document or believe that populations are getting smaller, it’s another to understand why and it’s really quite complex. And it kind of depends on what sort of person you are – if you are the kind of person who likes a single answer to a question then a lot of people – if you tell them avian malaria – they’ll say, that’s good – that’s enough of an answer. And that’s an important factor. But if you’re the kind of person that says, simple answers are all right, but I’m more interested in a more complex picture because I know that real life is more messy than just single answers. TN: In the mountain areas that you’ve done your counts and the areas that have been fenced off, have you pinpointed what could be the declining factors? PB: They change from year to year – at least we think they do. In some years – let’s say a drought year – there’s no question that the drought is a really important factor. Very few palila breed during drought and the reason for that is individual mamane trees produce relatively few flowers and relatively few pods. There’s always a few – even in the worst drought – there’s always a few flowers and a few pods, but it’s really not enough to support a population or support breeding. The palila really requires a lot of mamane seeds but mamane is their number one and during drought we’re quite satisfied that the relationship between rainfall and the number of mamane pods produced was pretty good. The less rain the less mamane pods so that’s a really important one during dry years. During normal – wetter years – other things can be important including predation, I mean, what we’re thinking, what we’re talking about now is what is affecting the population right now, you know, this breeding season or this year – so drought and weather conditions, predators – those things have a fairly immediate kind of impact but there are also longer term issues. TN: When you speak of predators – do you name the predators? PB: Of course, mostly on Mauna Kea it’s feral cats. There are rats up there and I think that they have an impact but we’ve never really been able to demonstrate that they have as big an impact as the cats. For example, during the time we were studying – we would put surveillance cameras at nest and we would also just physically go and check nests every few days. But the cameras caught – I think there were four instances, if I recall right – of cats on camera showing palila chicks. During daylight, about ten percent of all palila chicks in that year was eaten by cats. I don’t think that necessarily 10 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 happens every year. We were able to document that so we believe cats are an important predator. We thought mangoose might have gotten one next but it wasn’t a nest we’re not positive about that - we think rats probably do occasionally get the palila. We did not have documentation of that either with rat droppings or anything. We don’t want to forget that palila have native predators too – the pueo. The pueo will hit nests with chicks. It’s hard to document because they’re very, very fast. We had one person in a blind one day and he said he just was looking down for a moment. When he looked up, this pueo was just sort of flying away from the nest and it had taken the chick so there are predators – there are threats. Going back to weather – probably the single biggest factor in destroying palila nests can be just these big mountain storms. You just get a big rainstorm or even hail and you go out the next days and many, many nests have failed because the chicks got too cold or the eggs got too cold and wet. TN: I come to my question now with all these previous efforts of fencing an area to protect the palila bird – has the fencing method worked? PB: No. The fence doesn’t have any short term impact whatsoever. So we’ve been talking about short term threats and we have not been talking about the longer term threats or the medium term threats. It’s too early to say what impact the fencing has had or will have. Based on studies by Paul Scowcroft of the Forest Service, he measured growth rates of mamane. He said, it takes about 25 years for a mamane to grow to a 4 meter height – and that’s about the height that is valuable to palila. In other words – a small mamane, maybe a meter or even 2 meters high has some value. The birds use it a little bit – but what we found is the birds really use the big trees – the bigger the tree overall - the more valuable it is to palila. We’ve got a very slow growing tree in a fairly harsh environment where, it’s just gonna take decades and decades for these resources to become really very valuable. They become incrementally valuable every few years as they grow, but the value is diminished in any given year maybe by drought if it’s a bad dry year – the trees is not going to produce very many flowers or fruit pods - the value of that tree in that period of time is low for palila because there’s really not much food on it- there might be some caterpillars which are important... TL: Todd Lum was interested in the palila. One of the things that he told us was that the sheep were an impact on very small mamane trees. When you talk about a two meter tree, he said from two meters on up – browsing of mouflon is what he was talking about – wasn’t as serious a threat to the tree as it certainly was to younger trees. Do you agree with that? PG: That’s quite right, We’ve thought about the tree size issue quite a bit – if you’re a six, seven, eight meter high tree, browsing is only getting your very lowest branches – in fact – you won’t have any lower branches cause they’re 11 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 browsed off. If you’re a one meter tree – chances are you could be completely eaten up – that’s not always the case but potentially you can be, so there’s a huge difference. If you’re a big tree, the impact is way different than if you’re a little tree. In the vegetation work – studies that we’ve done up there show that the average size to height of mamane, at least when we did the work in 2001 – was about 4 meters. It just depends on high the mouflon can get on that particular tree, but on average, probably only a ¼ to 1/3 of a tree that size is available to a mouflon – to a browser – that can reach up. So you can kind of just do the calculation. The tree is producing mamane flowers and pods all the way down to ground level – the branches that I’ve seen growing on the ground – I’ve actually even seen palila foraging essentially on the ground. NP: NP: Without the grazers, then the grass grows. The grass can get thick and it can smother the small mamane? PB: Yes. There’s fire fuel in the grass. When we were doing our vegetation analysis up there – we saw lots of grass even in areas where there were still lots of mouflon at the time. I don’t know what the threshold is – how many sheep would it take to graze the habitat to the point where you don’t have high fuel build up of grass but you still have good luxurious mamane for palila. NP: Can there be a population of game animals – grazers – mouflon sheep – that could co-exist and actually be beneficial? And one other question, I remember hearing the palila would pluck or pick from the ground sheep hair and put it in their nest. Wwhen the sheep were eradicated, they no longer could keep their babies warm that way. Is that true? PB: It’s true that they use wool and if that were an important issue that would be an easy one to solve because with or without sheep we could simply go distribute wool around and the birds would use it. They’ll use all kinds of things – the nesting material is usually sticks with grass lining and rootlets and things like that – it’s a very fine thing – and then the last thing they put their nest is lichen usually. NP: I also heard through that the helicopters eradicating the sheep and mouflon and whatever there was that they came pretty low and they would cause a lot of turbulence – the mamane would be blowing and the palila nests would be in distress. Do you think that could have caused some nest abandonment – the eradication process? PB: I think, hypothetically, I mean there’s lots of things. TL: National Park Service did a study ’84, ’85 – the lower level of Mauna Kea being devoid of palila because of the noise of the helicopters and they also cited up at the national park situations where helicopters were causing birds to leave their nests at the national park and so the National Park Service 12 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 made a recommendation that they don’t want to have helicopters around these birds. : And specifically in palila they were talking about the military and the impact of the helicopter because there’s helicopters that have been up for thirty, forty years all the time – and now you have tour helicopters that are coming through there all the time PB: To address your question or your point is there’s almost unlimited ways to disturb palila – you could do it any number of ways and really – at least in my mind – it boils down to is the disturbance worth the potential gain and that’s a question the managers have to address. DY: In terms of policy as it relates to this area – who is managing it? PB: I should make clear that as a biologist with US Geological Survey we don’t have anything to do with policy. We do advise policy makers’ decision makers – if they ask us what you think is bothering palila? DY: Who does because right now we have an eradication program going on? So if you guys are not the bad guys who made that decision and I understand the courts were involved. You’ve been doing your study now for what twenty years? PB: Twenty-five years. DY: In that twenty-five years who’s making policy and managing the area? PB: The state and the US Fish and Wildlife Service have regulatory authority over palila as an endangered species and they are the policy makers and implementers. TL: Or isn’t Earth Justice a big part of that policy? PB: They have the legal reach. TL: Every time you try to do something they’ll sue. Who is working with the public on that as well because one of the things – conservation biology or ecosystem management, really should be – and the US Fish and Wildlife Service? PB: The issue here is you’re speaking to a researcher. I’m not allowed to advocate. If a manager wants my opinion, I may suggest, if you do this, I think this might happen. If you do that I think that might happen, but the choice is really up to you to weigh 13 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 TL: It’s fine to get an opinion from you? PB: I can give an opinion if I think I’m qualified. I’ll give you an opinion on what I think is good for palila or bad for palila but there’s a lot I wouldn’t know – there’s just many unknowns. TN: Over these 25 years that you’ve been doing research – has the other agency come to you for your opinion? PB: Yes. TN: And so if these agencies have come to you for their opinion than we can come to you for your opinion also? PB: We have to come to an understanding of what my opinion is going to be based on. I can’t give you just my personal opinion as a sort of a hunch – I mean, I’m constrained to give you an opinion based on some research. DY: If somehow there was funding for research on the impact of the sheep or on the palila, then a study could be conducted to do that? PB: Somebody probably would be willing to do that study – but I would point out that most people who are gonna be funding things comes from government sources. Yeah, I mean, there are private sources of money for endangered species research but generally it’s public funding. People are going to say well what research has already happened. The first thing that would occur in any research project is let’s look at – what has happened – so they go to Paul Scowcroft’s research and they say here’s Jon Giffin’s research and here’s what we know from those time periods and under those circumstances and then they would maybe build on that. I don’t think it’s an unexplored issue. It may not be as thoroughly explored as you might wish – be careful about encouraging a research to do more – because that’s what we love to do more research DY: So you’re telling me to go study the existing stuff first. PB: I would examine that and if you see deficiencies, then that’s something that maybe somebody could address and say OK that study did such and such but now we have other ideas that could be explored. DY: So I have a related question – as it relates to endangered species – they’re always comes a point especially with vertebrates that there is discussion 14 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 about whether you leave the organism in the habitat or remove it from the habitat. So who makes that decision? PB: At least in the US that would be the US Fish & Wildlife Service. They are the entity that somebody’s gonna sue – either because they don’t want that endangered species on their land or they do – they want to see recovery, that is the agency that gets sued and the state can be folded into that because – at least here – they have also responsibility for endangered species so the guys that get sued are the guys that are gonna make these decisions... DY: So these are the guys-the results of research. PB: That’s exactly right. WJC: I understand you are doing the research on pretty much the bird itself so that kind of takes me back to Ike’s question as far as the management. What are we actively doing to try and help besides getting rid of the sheep? Who’s trying to manage any of this? PB: Good question and I don’t want to characterize what the managers are doing or I’ll characterize it but I’m gonna be very careful as I characterize it because that’s their kuleana. If I was in the shoes of the managers – if I was a manager sitting here right now – I would be telling you that I have dozens of dozens of species – endangered species – plants, birds, whatever – that I’m responsible for managing and saving and I don’t have a budget that can cover a fraction of it. I’m not trying to make excuses for anybody but I’m just saying if I was the manager – that would be my reality. WJC: This brings us to the point where again - I commend you on 25+ years of research on all of these things but I would think it would be kind of frustrating on your part too, that you’re watching these species decline and nobody’s really honestly doing anything about it. PB: That’s right... WJC: We all know that – there’s no management plan for anything... PB: There are plans - like good intentions are only as good as the paper they’re on. It is very frustrating – I learned from my dad, that if you’re gonna be in the endangered species business – this is what it is – it’s mostly things going downhill and very few opportunities to get something going in the opposite direction – and it does happen. We see this with nene – that after decades and decades – I’m not totally comfortable with that it’s recovered but it’s like well it’s way better then it was in the sixties and seventies. I think it’s frustrating for everybody. I won’t say it’s a no-win situation – because I think there could be some wins but so far there’s not been one Hawaiian bird that 15 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 has been taken off the endangered species list and that’s for good reason because they shouldn’t be taken off just yet. The nene’s kinda getting closer and closer – it’ll probably make it – you could maybe make a case ‘io. WJC: What does the alala eat? PB: According to the old timers that wrote down the notes in the 1890s – they said ‘ie’ie fruit was number one – it wasn’t the only thing – but ‘ie’ie was really important – and other things too. They’re largely a fruit eater but they rob bird’s nests, they take eggs – chicks – of other bird species. They even take a little bit of nectar. They eat just about everything. So one of the fruits they eat is hoawa, -it’s a large fruit. One of the most impressive things I ever saw was an alala pick one and he flew to a perch and he’s holding it with one foot and he’s just using his beak to hammer, hammer, hammer and it took him – minutes to hammer this thing open. The little oily seeds was what he was after – so these guys work for a living. WJC: Right. There’s probably a lot of stuff that they used to eat that’s not here anymore. PB: It’s declined. I think is a real key thing. In reintroducing alala to the wild is like, OK, where you gonna put ‘em? And it’s like, OK, you got to build up the habitat – but that is a very long term proposition. What’s interesting about today’s effort is you have these birds in captivity – it’s very expensive to maintain them in captivity – you’ve got to build aviaries and the more successful you are in breeding them in cages the more cages you need and at some point – we gotta get ‘em out in the wild – where are they gonna go? WJC: Is there native food there? PB: There’s fruit – it’s not the best, it’s not the best stuff. Puu Makaala area is just barely on the edge of the historical range of alala – so, you know, my preference would be habitat that’s a little more central to where they were historically because I think the elements of the habitat are better there, however, I think eventually we’ll get there, the birds will go back to some of these areas. Those areas have to be restored too,- it’s like there’s no perfect place right now. That should be the goal is to get some of these other areas that were well within the historical range really good,- really good habitat. WJC: And whose job is that? DLNR? PB: Iit’s federal, state, private, whoever is willing to have alala on their lands... 16 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 TN: With the devastation of the ohia trees all over this island with the ohia fungus that’s attacking it – has this hurt the population of our birds? I went to B.J.’s Friday lecture series at NELHA and his newest number is that we have 75% of our ohia native forest in Puna area around the island just totally decimated. Being that his numbers are so high will that affect the bird population? PB: Yes, really good question. Yeah, let me first say – my understanding of the ROD is that not 70% of the forest is devastated at this point but that may be happening in the future. However, I take your point, what has happened is extensive and it’s alarming and it does affect birds – ohia is the backbone of the forest ecosystem for most of our native birds – with a few exceptions – palila – you know, they don’t have ohia in the first place, but most birds are – ohia is very important to them and so this is cause for real concern – that’s kind of the short answer – I don’t tend to give very many short answers but there’s a short answer for you... TN: What is being done should the bird population become even more effective with this ROD that’s affecting all of our ohia trees because once the ohia tree goes then the forest canopy goes – once the forest canopy goes it affects the other trees, once that goes then the invasive species of weeds and bushes takes its place. So what is management doing? How will it affect your research work, all of this has to come into factoring into your research. PB: Right. I won’t speak for the whole researcher-management community but I’ll just mention a new project that we’re gonna be starting. We were successful in getting a small amount of money. We’re gonna be looking at plant hosts of caterpillars and the reason we’re going to be doing that is caterpillars are really the number one food for our native forest birds. As a general rule – they feed it to their off spring – it’s important to most of the adults too. And so just as an example at Hakalau where we examine bird droppings, We can find in the bird droppings – well the little mandibles – the little jaws, basically, of caterpillars are really the key thing for many species including the endangered ones and this is not like a real surprise. Caterpillars are important bird foods around the world – beetles and things are also important but our thought is – because we have very few native trees and shrubs relatively speaking – it’s important to know we identified three caterpillar – we don’t know the species but we can identify them just by their looks and we’ll try to identify them by species under this project. There’s only three at Hakalau that are really important and all the rest are eaten. Our goal is to figure out do these three caterpillars. Is the main host plant ohia or olapa? What are their host plants? We’re hoping that it’s not just ohia. If it’s 17 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 just ohia, then we don’t have any real solution. Let’s say ohelo and pukiawe, olapa, you name it – whatever other hosts there may be for these three important caterpillar types, then that’s the news we’ll take to the managers and say, if you think ohia’s gonna be declining at Hakalau, you may want to be planting these alternative hosts. Now that only goes so far – but right now I think we’re kind of bailing the boat with a teaspoon, cause this is a problem that’s just enormous. If you truly could wipe out most of the ohia in ten or twenty year – thirty years or something like that – they’re just – everybody’s caught short – there’s just no easy answer. TL: You know the Black sphinx moth – does well with the tobacco plant But it survives very well with that particular habitat and out near where Willie- Joe lives there used to be in Keanakolu and Piha and Laupahoehoe. The forest used to be covered, smothered in some cases with banana poka. You also had a forest full of red birds too. If the species itself is important – like the alala – cause we know that if we kept it in captivity or maybe if we were able to give it to zoos on the mainland like they did with the nene – ship them off to England. We have mouflon here and we have animals here that are extinct - or maybe not extinct but not doing well in their home territory but they’re doing great here – so is it the species or is it that we have to have this little terrarium, aquarium or whatever it might be – is that so necessary if really it’s a species – you talk about this caterpillar – maybe some other caterpillar might do the same job that might not a native plant but, you know, some introduced plant. PB: Once you start tinkering with food webs and all the rest of the interactions that are going on out there, you run a risk of going too far in one direction. Or not knowing what the consequences are gonna be and that’s one of the important points that we are constantly talking about to the manager I might say – here’s what might benefit i’iwi, but have to very careful. If I do that what bad consequences might occur that Banko didn’t think about, it’s the whole thing and it adds to the frustration because everything slows down. You’re always looking over your shoulder. Is a manager potentially gonna make a mistake that would be worse than not doing anything at all. A lot of these things are just not knowable. Nature is so complex that our simple way of thinking about things could lead to some serious problems. We don’t know what mistake we’re currently making and we don’t know what mistakes we’re gonna make in the future. The only thing we can do is keep that in mind and say, OK, if you take this action – remember – there could be all kinds of waves rippling out from the pebble you throw in the pond. We take it very seriously, if we say, well, you should eliminate this. You may be eliminating a food resource for another native species that’s had to use that as an alternate food because their preferred food is gone. So all these things are very delicate and difficult to figure out. 18 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 NP: Do you think that they knew- by killing the banana poka that the i’iwi were feeding on the banana poka? PB: They knew. NP: This population will die back because we’ll kill the banana poka but native species will fill in and then the population will come back up the road... PB: This is exactly the thing is that if you’re only thinking of i’iwi you may or may not decide to kill banana poka – but if you’re thinking at the forest level – OK – we want a native ecosystem to be functioning – i’iwi are part of it – akiapolaau are part of it and so on then your calculation may be different because you’re saying well, am I only interested in i’iwi or am I interested in the whole forest bird community or the whole plant community and if, banana poka is smothering areas, which frankly, Piha was pretty bad – you got to think, OK, if we remove it, it could have some negative effects on i’iwi and maybe some other birds. Overall, we think maybe the positive effects out weight. NP: You didn’t know about the rapid ohia death. PB: Right. You never know what’s coming around the corner. Banana poka is a very rich nectar source. It’s a different quality nectar than ohia. It’s very rich – it’s very high in sucrose and birds love it but they don’t require it. I’ll point out a study that was done by a PhD. Student at University of Hawaii, Manoa and what she found was she put radio transmitters on i’iwi at Hakalau and then watched what happened and what she found was a lot of birds going down in lower elevation to areas of ohia and poka but mainly ohia during the non-breeding season. Not all birds – but some of the birds that she pegged went miles down Laupahoehoe area – fled some of them for several weeks and then came back up home to Hakalau. Other birds stayed at Hakalau. She found that the birds that tended to be successful nesters tended to stay at Hakalau but if you weren’t successful you were more likely to go in search of better foraging grounds cause you didn’t have as good a territory at Hakalau as the top birds had. These birds when they go down to the lower elevations are at risk of being bitten by mosquitos that are carrying avian malaria. It was probably a good decision to go after banana poka because I think it was really smothering a lot of native forests and in the long run again, If you look at the short term it might be different than if you looks at the long term. If we’re looking decades ahead and saying poka could be really, really smothering the forest and in the end all we’re gonna be left with is a lot of poka then a lot of species that are depending on other native plants in Piha could be affected by that. 19 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 NP: Couldn’t there be a milder approach to things – banana poka – no banana poka – sheep – no sheep. I mean, as scientist wouldn’t you want to be a little more gentle toward nature being that it’s so complex and there are so many unknown things and as scientists wouldn’t you like to be able to be corrected, gather new information and admit well maybe we didn’t do the right thing, and maybe we should do something different and representing the game animals that’s all we ask – we love the native species. As you can see, we’re concerned - we love them – we want to know and we support you but we’d like to see some more of a moderate approach and more of a fair approach to ecosystems where everything can co-exist cause you say, well, the sheep were overly browsing the mamane – they have a history of devastation – well, maybe because they weren’t managed properly and we push heavy about management – managing the game – finding the right population and keeping it. PB: Yes. I personally believe in moderation in most things but so often we don’t have control over how much or how little to manage something. As a researcher we have no control because it’s not our kuleana at all. It’s actually, rare when a manager actually can get to zero on something. That’s a rare event. Usually, they’re struggling to just knock things down to a level that’s noticeably lower. Case in point is almost, almost any weed – poka’s a good example of where biocontrol – they used the fungus that’s pretty darn effective – whether it will continue to be effective - it’s effective in that area. I don’t know if it’s spreading to other poka populations or not but it’s kind of – you can count them one or two hands the number of times – it’s like that weed – they knocked it way down. If you look at the history of biocontrol – Hawaii was one of the proving grounds – Australia, Hawaii, California – back in the late 1800s they brought in all kinds of things to control agricultural pests. TL: Yeah, the mongoose... PB: Mongoose and lots of insects. It was just a time of kind of unrestricted experimentation. BM: My name is Brian Mabry. I am representing myself and not any government organization. I heard you state, Paul, earlier on that some of the old researchers probably even your father went to different places to get information but it also sounded like they went farmers and hunters. So is that true that you went to hunters, farmers, people who lived in the areas where these species used to live? 20 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 PB: Yeah, he talked to a lot of people and his interviews are captured. There’s about a foot and half of documents where he wrote down all the details and either he got it from the literature or he got it from talking to somebody. BM: Is that type of research being used today? When we had the severe drought up on the mountain about seven to nine years – and I have an opportunity where I’m on the mountain four nights a week for the last fifteen years, so I’ve seen the patterns, I’ve also seen the bird populations down at the Saddle Road, Pohakuloa area and they’ll go down the hatches that go down and he’s saying with the vegetation – well, I noticed the same thing with the mamane bloom – the fact that the fog bank was not coming all the way in – it would retreat early to the Waikoloa side and it was also at the time of the palila decline and the study came out stating why are we gonna do the eradication and if anyone had any comments – I commented and I stated that there were also other people that could support what we were seeing, but we were never contacted. Is there a possibility to bring hunters back in knowing that hunters are going to be reluctant to say I sighted this bird here, because they’ve seen the fences go up. PB: Sure, I still get telephone calls from people that say I saw what I think is such and such a bird and in some cases I just have a hard time accepting the observation because I think that’s just so unlikely and the person is maybe not that familiar with birds but most of the time, if somebody says I saw this and they describe it – I say, you saw what you saw and we’ll write it down and if I have time I’ll come out and look and almost never do I find it – because these birds are moving around. PB: I’d say all hands on deck when it comes to conservation so contributions from everybody I think are necessary. It’s not just a luxury, it’s really important for everybody to collaborate as best we can. KD: I just want to say thank you so much for all that information. Now I know for a fact that it’s management and that’s how we got to go about it and we get one commission at a state level and a county level so now we start utilizing in the right perspective. Thank you. PB: You’re very welcome. TL: Yeah, we’d like to have you back PB: Sure. OK. TN: Getting back to the agenda – can we go back to the budget? TL: What about it. TN: When the fiscal year ended – was the balance of last year carried over? 21 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 TL: That I don’t know – I don’t think so. TN: So it we don’t use it we lose it. TL: That’s correct. TN: So we ended up with a $3,982.27 that we never used? TL: Very possible. TN: And then we start off with a $5,000 dollar budget. TL: That’s correct. TN: OK. So then on our agenda – when we get to it – we can talk about our gathering. Thank you. . th TL: Our gathering will be on August 26 c. Gun Range Resolution. Put on Agenda for Committee of Full Council Hearing in August. TL: The gun range resolution is moving – it’s gonna be heard in committee on Tuesday, August 1, 2017, and I’ll know later on this week what time and whether or not we need to have testimony – but when it comes out of committee it’ll be heard probably in the following week by the full council. Next week Tuesday and also Jim O’Keefe is going through his final thing with the County Council on Monday as well – so anybody who has an opportunity – and I’m not sure if they’re doing it here or in Kona, but I think it’s here. MH: This is Malia – I just wanted to let you know it’s Resolution 246-17. It is the second item on the agenda for August 1, Public Works, Parks and Recreation Committee, so if you guys want to know then you can look at where it is on the list when Public Works and the Parks and Rec will come up. They’re usually running behind but they have different days that you can testify. TL: And we probably want to wrap up right now – but as we get through this hearing on the gun range – it’s gonna be up to us and those that we can enlist for community outreach and that’s gonna be for a lot of things – one of them is potential areas, potential sites, and any site that is out there we want to be able to go talk to the neighbors make sure that they understand what we’re doing and we get their support. This is something that all of us are gonna have to do – anybody who’s a shooter – doesn’t have to be part of the commission – but anybody who’s a shooter that’s interested in this – we need 22 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 to get them involved and this something that’s gonna happen, but it’s only gonna happen if we make it happen. I’m gonna ask for help from everybody and looking for that. I’m ready to close this meeting... B. NEW BUSINESS 1. Commission Members Get Together MH: At the last meeting you mentioned that you wanted to go to Kona next month. Is that still the plan? TL: We will schedule our meeting in Kona for September. 9. NEXT MEETING SCHEDULED: August 22, 2017 Willie-Joe Camara moved to adjourn the meeting. Seconded by Dwayne “Ike” Yoshina and carried unanimously by a voice vote. ADJOURNMENT: 8:39 PM Respectfully submitted by: Donna Urban-Higuchi ATTEST: Thomas H. Lodge, Chairperson 23 Hawai’i Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – July 25, 2017 24