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TRANSCRIPT
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5 VOLUME I
6
7 ALASKA MIGRATORY BIRD CO-MANAGEMENT COUNCIL
8
9 SPRING MEETING
10
11 ANCHORAGE, ALASKA
12
13 APRIL 21, 2010
14
15 Members Present:
16
17 Dale Rabe, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Chair
18
19 Eric Taylor, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
20 Taqulik Hepa, North Slope
21 Ida Hildebrand, Chugach Regional Resource Commission
22 Enoch Shiedt, Maniilaq Association
23 John Reft, Sun'aq Tribal
24 Myron Naneng, Association of Village Council Presidents
25 Molly Chythlook, Bristol Bay Native Association
26 Joeneal Hicks, Copper River Native Association
27 Sandy Tahbone, Kawerak, Incorporated
28 Peter Devine, Aleutian/Pribilof Islands
29 Lisa Kangas, Tanana Chiefs Conference
30
31
32 Fred Armstrong, Executive Director
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45 Computer Matrix Court Reporters, LLC
46 135 Christensen Drive, Suite 2
47 Anchorage, AK 99501
48 907-243-0668
2
1 P R O C E E D I N G S
2
3 (Anchorage, Alaska - 4/21/2010)
4
5 (On record)
6
7 CHAIRMAN RABE: Good morning everybody.
8 I think we have a majority of the folks. There may be
9 a couple of people still out of the room, but I expect
10 they'll be back shortly here, members of the Council.
11
12 Good morning. I'm Dale Rabe. I am the
13 representative from the State of Alaska. I am the
14 Co-Chair of the Alaska Migratory Bird Co-Management
15 Council in rotation. I am serving as acting chair for
16 a short period this morning because Herman Squartsoff
17 has stepped down as a member of the Council and is not
18 here, so I'm filling in until a replacement from the
19 Native regional representative can be seated once we
20 get into the meeting.
21
22 So the meeting is being recorded. Our
23 recorder is Joe Kolasinski. Folks that are going to be
24 testifying from the public and/or from agency
25 representatives we need to have everything on the
26 record, so we'll ask that folks come up to the
27 microphone during the meeting for the various agenda
28 items that we have. I'm going to remain acting as
29 chair through the first four items until we establish a
30 quorum for this meeting and then we'll see. I assume
31 I'll be replaced at that point.
32
33 Logistics. Donna, do you have anything
34 that you want to announce to the group in terms of
35 bathrooms? Although I understand that the bathrooms
36 since last year have locks attached to them so if
37 anybody needs to use a restroom you need to memorize
38 the code to be able to get yourself into it. We'll try
39 and take breaks at sufficient intervals to allow people
40 to get coffee and step out and stretch their muscles.
41
42 We'll see how long the agenda is. It
43 looks fairly reasonable at this point in time, but it
44 could be that there's more discussion on various points
45 as we get into it.
46
47 So in the traditions in honor of the
48 Management Council, the first agenda item after the
49 call to order is a moment of silence in reflection of
50 -- to give thanks or in reflection of however you
3
1 acknowledge other spirits and your position. So let's
2 take a moment of silence if we would.
3
4 (Moment of silence)
5
6 CHAIRMAN RABE: Thank you all. The
7 third item on the agenda is seating of alternate
8 representatives. As a representative of the Sun'aq
9 Tribe of Kodiak, we have John Reft who is representing
10 that group. Let's see. We also have from Maniilaq
11 Association Enoch Shiedt.
12
13 Are there any other changes to
14 representation?
15
16 MR. REFT: The resignation of Herman
17 I'd like to state didn't have anything to do with the
18 Council. It was a private matter between a new manager
19 and a few things they asked him to do, which he did not
20 agree with, so he chose to step down, resign. I'm
21 sorry he did, but I've been here off and on with him as
22 alternate for several years and I hated to see him walk
23 away.
24
25 Thank you.
26
27 CHAIRMAN RABE: Okay.
28
29 MS. HILDEBRAND: I'm Ida Hildebrand. I
30 just wanted to inform you that I'm sitting in for Patty
31 Brown Schwalenberg from the Cook Inlet Region or Prince
32 William Sound Region.
33
34 CHAIRMAN RABE: Thank you. Any other
35 changes to the membership for this meeting?
36
37 (No comments)
38
39 CHAIRMAN RABE: Hearing none. The
40 fourth agenda item is a roll call and I'm going to ask
41 -- oh, I should announce that Eric Taylor is officially
42 representing the Fish and Wildlife Service as their
43 representative to the Council for this meeting in the
44 absence of Doug Alcorn. As such, he'll be serving as
45 secretary, so his first order of business would be to
46 do a roll call of membership and establish a quorum.
47
48 MR. TAYLOR: Good morning. The
49 Association of Village Council Presidents.
50
4
1 MR. NANENG: Yes.
2
3 MR. TAYLOR: Bristol Bay Native
4 Association.
5
6 MS. CHYTHLOOK: Here.
7
8 MR. TAYLOR: Chugach Regional Resource
9 Commission.
10
11 MS. HILDEBRAND: Here.
12
13 MR. TAYLOR: Copper River Native
14 Association.
15
16 MR. HICKS: Here.
17
18 MR. TAYLOR: Kawerak, Incorporated.
19
20 MS. TAHBONE: Sandra Tahbone for
21 Kawerak.
22
23 MR. TAYLOR: Southeast Alaska
24 Inter-tribal Fish and Wildlife Commission.
25
26 (No response)
27
28 MR. TAYLOR: Aleutian/Pribilof Island
29 Association.
30
31 MR. DEVINE: Here.
32
33 MR. TAYLOR: Sun'aq Tribe of Kodiak.
34
35 MR. REFT: Here.
36
37 MR. TAYLOR: Maniilaq Association.
38
39 MR. SHIEDT: Here.
40
41 MR. TAYLOR: North Slope Borough.
42
43 MS. HEPA: Here.
44
45 MR. TAYLOR: Tanana Chiefs Conference.
46
47 MS. KANGAS: Here.
48
49 MR. TAYLOR: Alaska Department of Fish
50 and Game.
5
1 CHAIRMAN RABE: Here.
2
3 MR. TAYLOR: U.S. Fish and Wildlife
4 Service. Eric Taylor. Thank you.
5
6 CHAIRMAN RABE: Okay. That takes us
7 through number four. What I would like to ask is if
8 there has been -- well, Doug suggested that we needed
9 to do a formal caucus. I don't know where things
10 stand. I don't know if we have a representative that
11 wants to inform the Council of what discussions have
12 occurred or where we stand with regards to seating a
13 chair for this meeting. Do you need to take a caucus
14 at this time?
15
16 MS. HEPA: Thank you, Mr. Chair. We
17 did have a Native caucus this morning and we selected
18 Myron Naneng as our representative to be the chair for
19 this meeting.
20
21 CHAIRMAN RABE: As a question, did that
22 caucus include everybody that has been seated?
23
24 MS. HEPA: The only person that wasn't
25 there was John.
26
27 MR. REFT: The reason why, I wasn't
28 clear from my tribe with the letter to Donna to okay
29 that I'm replacing Herman, but now I am after the fact.
30
31 CHAIRMAN RABE: I will leave it up to
32 the group to decide whether or not you feel the need to
33 reconvene and caucus based on that.
34
35 MS. TAHBONE: Mr. Chair, with that
36 information we can go back into caucus and include
37 John.
38
39 CHAIRMAN RABE: The desire of the group
40 is to go back into caucus, then we will stand down
41 until you've completed your caucus
42
43 MR. REFT: I'm okay with the decision there,
44 Sandra. I don't think we need to go back into a
45 caucus. Thank you.
46
47 CHAIRMAN RABE: Hearing that for the
48 record then, it sounds like there's no need for having
49 a caucus follow up. So at this point I would like to
50 offer Myron if you'd like to come up and chair the
6
1 balance of the meeting, I'll turn over the chair to
2 you.
3
4 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Good morning. I'd
5 like to thank the Native members of the Alaska
6 Migratory Bird Co-management Council or my co-Co-
7 management Council members for selecting me for their
8 chairman for this meeting.
9
10 I have to disclose that I have to leave
11 here like about 3:30 to go back to Bethel because
12 there's some important issues that we're going to be
13 talking about within the next few days with the
14 solicitors and the Department of Interior office
15 regarding some of the issues that we're talking about
16 here at this meeting, so I have to get back to Bethel
17 to prepare for those.
18
19 So, with that, we'll go on to the next
20 agenda item, item number 5. It's the introductions.
21 First we'll go with the Council around and then we'll
22 go on to the audience.
23
24 MS. HILDEBRAND: Ida Hildebrand,
25 Chugach Region Resources Commission.
26
27 MR. REFT: John Reft, Sun'aq Tribal
28 Council.
29
30 MS. HEPA: Taqulik Hepa representing
31 the North Slope Region.
32
33 MR. DEVINE: Peter Devine representing
34 Aleutian-Pribilof Island Association.
35
36 MR. SHIEDT: Enoch Shiedt, Attamuk,
37 representing Maniilaq in Kotzebue.
38
39 MR. TAYLOR: I'm Eric Taylor. I'm with
40 Fish and Wildlife Service.
41
42 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Myron Naneng with the
43 Association of Village Council Presidents.
44
45 MR. RABE: Dale Rabe with the State of
46 Alaska.
47
48 MR. HICKS: Joeneal Hicks, Copper River
49 Region.
50
7
1 MS. CHYTHLOOK: Molly Chythlook,
2 Bristol Bay Native Association.
3
4 MS. TAHBONE: Sandy Tahbone, Kawerak
5 Region.
6
7 MS. KANGAS: Lisa Kangas, Tanana Chiefs
8 Conference.
9
10 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Then we'll go to that
11 table over there first and then we'll go across the
12 room.
13
14 MR. NUPOWHOTUK: Mark Nupowhotuk, IRA
15 Council, Gambell.
16
17 MR. KANKUK: Kenneth Kankuk (ph),
18 Native Regional (indiscernible) representing Kawerak.
19
20 MR. JAMES: Michael James, Native
21 Village of Gambell.
22
23 MR. AHMASUK: Austin Ahmasuk, Kawerak.
24
25 MR. BAFFERY: Michael Baffery, Department of
26 Interior.
27
28 MS. ZELLER: Tamara Zeller, Fish and
29 Wildlife Service.
30
31 MS. NAVES: Liliana Naves, Fish and
32 Game.
33
34 MR. ROSENBERG: Dan Rosenberg, Alaska
35 Department of Fish and Game.
36
37 MR. YOUNG: I'm Gary Young, Fish and
38 Wildlife Service, law enforcement.
39
40 MR. MATHEWS: Vince Mathews, Refuges
41 out of Fairbanks.
42
43 MR. LIEDBERG: Paul Liedberg, Refuge
44 manager from Togiak National Wildlife Refuge in
45 Dillingham.
46
47 MR. TROST: Bob Trost, Fish and
48 Wildlife Service and the Pacific Flyway representative.
49
50 MS. BRAEM: Nicole Braem, Subsistence
8
1 Division, Fish and Game.
2
3 MS. DEWHURST: Donna Dewhurst, Staff
4 for the Council.
5
6 MR. PEDERSON: Mike Pederson.
7
8 MR. BACON: Joshua Bacon.
9
10 CHAIRMAN NANENG: With that I'd like to
11 thank everyone for being here and then we'll go onto
12 item number C. Bob Trost of the Flyway Service
13 representative.
14
15 MR. TROST: Thank you, Myron and
16 members of the Council. It's nice to get a chance to
17 come up and visit with you all again and keep track of
18 what's going on here. I have two items that I would
19 like to discuss with you today just very briefly. The
20 first is I mentioned the supplemental environmental
21 impact statement on migratory bird hunting, which
22 covers all migratory bird hunting activities in the
23 United States.
24
25 As you know, I was actually charged and
26 have been the senior author of that particular
27 document. We expect its release sometime within the
28 next couple of months and we will distribute that to
29 you for your comments. It does cover the process for
30 establishing regulations for subsistence hunting as
31 well as the regulations that apply to all the other
32 folks who hunt migratory birds in the United States.
33 So it is all encompassing in that regard and you will
34 have a direct interest in that.
35
36 For the distribution, I anticipate what
37 we will do is we will send it to Donna and Fred and
38 they will take charge of distributing it out to all of
39 you. It's a fairly lengthy document and we're not
40 planning to print a whole lot of copies of the draft.
41 We'll distribute a lot of it electronically on CD's and
42 if that's acceptable to you, that is probably how
43 you'll get it. If you do need a printed copy, we will
44 make sure that you get one of those.
45
46 The status of this particular document
47 at this point in time is that it has cleared the
48 solicitor's review, the Council of Environmental
49 Quality has had a look at it. All of the internal
50 reviews that have to take place for the Federal
9
1 government have occurred with the final exception that
2 the Department of Interior solicitor's chief solicitor
3 has to sign off on it yet. At that point it will go to
4 the Environmental Protection Agency and the Service
5 will jointly announce the release with the
6 Environmental Protection Agency.
7
8 I can't tell you how long that will
9 take. As you are well aware, the demands on the
10 solicitor's time are fairly substantial, but we do
11 anticipate it should be released sometime in the next
12 month or two. As soon as it is, we will let you know.
13
14 The other thing that I would like to
15 convey too, the apologies of Ron Anglin. His job in
16 the state of Oregon is such that his legislature
17 required his presence and, therefore, he is not able to
18 come as a representative to this group.
19
20 However, there is an issue that has
21 gone on that we have talked with you several times in
22 the past about, which is the issue of goose
23 depredations in the Willamette Valley, lower Columbia
24 region of Washington and Oregon, where a great many of
25 the Canada geese from Alaska actually winter now. The
26 primary populations that are of interest here are
27 associated with the YK-Delta and we're the source of
28 the YK Delta Goose Management Plan that was signed
29 originally in 1984. These are Cackling Canada geese.
30
31 The agricultural depredation problem
32 became so severe in that particular area that the
33 Oregon state legislature convened a special task force.
34 Ron Anglin is a member of that, as am I. I'm the
35 Federal government's representative on that particular
36 group. But the vast majority of participants are the
37 local farming community. They're looking for solutions
38 for this particular problem. I'm not going to go into
39 the details of this at this time. I think this is an
40 agenda item under other business later in this meeting
41 and if it's not, I would ask the chair if, indeed, it
42 could be included.
43
44 There is a statement that Ron sent, a
45 written statement, that's on the back table and I think
46 many of you may already have received that. It might
47 be a good idea to familiarize yourself with that
48 perhaps at a break or some such. When this topic comes
49 up, there are some specific actions that will be
50 brought before the Pacific Flyway Council this year
10
1 with regard to this goose depredation issue that I
2 would like to make sure that this Council is aware of
3 and there will be proposals I'm reasonably certain at
4 this point in time before the Service Regulations
5 Committee for certain actions that would deal with
6 regulations.
7
8 When we hit that point in the agenda,
9 we'll give you more details on what the specifics of
10 those proposals will be. But I'm certain that this
11 Council's opinion of those issues would be much valued
12 in the deliberations of what the appropriate course of
13 action should be.
14
15 And with that I would conclude my very
16 brief report, Mr. Chair, and I thank you for the
17 opportunity.
18
19 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thank you, Bob. Is
20 there any questions for Bob before he gets off the
21 podium.
22
23 (No comments)
24
25 CHAIRMAN NANENG: It sounds like there
26 isn't going to be any. So thanks, Bob, for your
27 report. Ron Anglin, as Bob stated, has to be back in
28 Oregon. I think it was to talk about the Cackling
29 Canada Geese and goose depredation from the YK Delta,
30 we've tried to work with the Oregon farmers on their
31 issues regarding farmland and plant depredation. So if
32 any of you have the opportunity to go down to Oregon
33 and see what the birds do and then reproducing in
34 numbers in the YK Delta or in the state of Alaska, I
35 think you ought to take that opportunity at some point
36 in the future.
37
38 So, with that, we'll go on to item
39 number 6, review and
40 adoption of the agenda.
41
42 MS. HEPA: Mr. Chairman. I make a
43 motion to approve the agenda as presented, but I'd like
44 to pull from the consent agenda items the North Slope
45 Region.
46
47 MS. HILDEBRAND: Mr. Chair, I second.
48
49 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Motion made and
50 seconded. Any further discussion on the motion to
11
1 adopt the agenda. Yes.
2
3 MR. RABE: Mr. Chair. It may be that
4 I'm not reading the agenda clearly, but I'm not sure
5 that I see an agenda item under other business that
6 would deal with the depredation question that Bob Trost
7 just brought up. If it's there and it's disguised in
8 its wording, I'm fine. Otherwise I would recommend an
9 amendment or a change to the agenda to have that added.
10
11
12 MR. ROSENBERG: Bob and I have looked
13 at that agenda. We thought the appropriate time might
14 be when I'm on the agenda to discuss the conservation
15 (away from microphone).
16
17 MR. RABE: Okay. It is there then, but
18 it is well disguised.
19
20 MR. ROSENBERG: Well, it wasn't
21 obvious, so we decided that might be a good time.
22 However, we would like to be assured that we do it
23 while Myron is still here. So as long as we can do it
24 before. Bob has to leave after today also, so it would
25 be nice if we could fit it in before 3:00 o'clock.
26
27 MR. RABE: Okay.
28
29 MR. ROSENBERG: But we could also make
30 it a separate agenda item. We just wanted to make sure
31 it got in, so we were going to put it in there.
32
33 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Since Eric is going
34 to be talking about the migratory bird population and
35 trends, I think that we can move that up to under new
36 business as C before we get to the consent agenda.
37 Make it item C and then make the consent agenda D.
38 There's been a request to pull the North Slope and
39 that's been seconded. Any further discussion on the
40 agenda. Yes.
41
42 MR. TAYLOR: Just as a point of
43 clarification, regarding the statement from the state
44 of Oregon regarding Cackler depredation, I believe the
45 handout is on the back table. It's not included in the
46 binder. Is that correct, Donna? The one-page handout.
47
48 MS. DEWHURST: It's on the back table.
49 I can pass it out.
50
12
1 MR. TAYLOR: As Bob mentioned, I think
2 it would be good for the Council at some point to read
3 the one-page handout, possibly before the discussion.
4 I think it might clarify the situation. Thank you.
5
6 MS. HEPA: Call for question.
7
8 CHAIRMAN NANENG: The question has been
9 called for. All i favor say aye.
10
11 IN UNISON: Aye.
12
13 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Those opposed say no.
14
15 (No opposing votes)
16
17 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Motion carried.
18 We're down to item number 7, invitation for public
19 comments. Anybody from the public want to make any
20 comments on any of the issues that we're going to be
21 talking about.
22
23 (No comments)
24
25 CHAIRMAN NANENG: If there are no
26 public comments, then we'll go on to the next agenda
27 item, which is item number 8, the adoption of Council
28 action items from fall September 29th through October
29 1st meeting in Nome.
30
31 MS. HEPA: So moved, Mr. Chair.
32
33 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Motion made by
34 Taqulik. Is there a second.
35
36 MR. DEVINE: Second.
37
38 MR. HICKS: Second.
39
40 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Second by -- two
41 seconds. Any further discussion on the motion to adopt
42 the action items.
43
44 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Question.
45
46 CHAIRMAN NANENG: The question has been
47 called for. All in favor say aye.
48
49 IN UNISON: Aye.
50
13
1 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Those opposed say no.
2
3 (No opposing votes)
4
5 CHAIRMAN NANENG: The adoption of the
6 Council actions is done. So we're down to item number
7 9, regional reports, regional meeting updates, interest
8 of concern. Council members. This is an opportunity to
9 talk about some of the issues that we've had this past
10 year. Lisa.
11
12 MS. KANGAS: Lisa Kangas from Tanana
13 Chiefs Conference. We had our spring meeting April
14 5th. It was a teleconference and there were a couple
15 of items, issues that came up. The first one is pretty
16 minor. We were talking about the structure of our
17 Council. Not this one, but our Regional Council. So
18 there may be changes. We're going to have another
19 teleconference next May as far as representation and
20 just the order of our Council.
21
22 The second issue was brought up by the
23 Yukon Flats region and they submitted a resolution,
24 which was passed at the TCC convention in March. I
25 don't have copies, but we do plan on putting this into
26 proposal form this December. I'll go ahead and read it
27 out.
28
29 The harvest of subsistence food by the
30 indigenous people of TCC. Whereas the indigenous
31 people of Alaska have relied upon the harvest of spring
32 waterfowl for generations;
33
34 And whereas the harvest is limited to
35 Alaska Natives who have permanent residence of an
36 included area of the state;
37
38 And whereas State and Federal agencies
39 have interpreted this provision to prohibit the
40 transportation of legally harvested waterfowl from
41 included areas to excluded areas;
42
43 And whereas the Migratory Bird Treaty
44 Act specifically authorizes the harvest of spring
45 waterfowl by Alaska Natives living in and from excluded
46 areas subject to specific provisions;
47
48 And whereas the Alaska Migratory Bird
49 Co-management Council, AMBCC, has never adopted
50 regulations or proposals to clarify the exact process
14
1 on how these provisions will be implemented;
2
3 And whereas conflicts and confusion has
4 contributed to jeopardizing the customary and
5 traditional harvest of migratory birds;
6
7 And whereas our tribal members are
8 being prosecuted for feeding their families and
9 relatives in urban areas such as Fairbanks and other
10 larger cities. These birds are being harvested
11 legally. Officials check our freight boxes for wild
12 game and other subsistence resources that we intend to
13 send to elders and family.
14
15 Now therefore be it resolved by the
16 delegates of the 2010 annual TCC convention that the
17 AMBCC take the immediate steps necessary to prevent
18 such actions being taken by State and Federal
19 enforcement agencies during the spring migratory bird
20 harvest by Alaska Natives.
21
22 This was signed by the full board of
23 directors of TCC and it's basically just an issue of
24 people coming from outside of the village who still are
25 tribal members and the tribes want it to be up to them
26 to recognize who can and cannot hunt in their area as
27 long as they're tribal members. So they've been having
28 issues of being hassled by law enforcement when it
29 comes to bringing food out of the village or sending it
30 to elders.
31
32 Those were the issues.
33
34 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any questions to Lisa
35 regarding the resolution from Tanana Chiefs.
36
37 MS. TAHBONE: Mr. Chair.
38
39 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Sandy.
40
41 MS. TAHBONE: Which committee would
42 that go to, I'm wondering.
43
44 CHAIRMAN NANENG: I think it would go
45 to the Harvest Committee as well as law enforcement.
46 That request for people from outside of the village
47 that are tribal members to be able to hunt was part of
48 the negotiations of the Migratory Bird Protocol
49 Amendment and it was adopted by the group and
50 recognized by all the negotiators as being part of the
15
1 language. The details have to be worked on, but I
2 think that Fish and Wildlife Service or the State
3 should not be enforcing laws without due cause or
4 something like that, you know. Excuse the terminology,
5 but if they're doing that, it seems like our people are
6 being picked on for trying to harvest birds that
7 they're used to feed their families. Do you have an
8 explanation?
9
10 MS. DEWHURST: Yeah, Donna Dewhurst.
11 The existing regulations, and it's not in the public
12 book, but in the full regulations, it's in the Federal
13 Register, does allow for invitations out to a village,
14 so the village can invite folks to come out to the
15 village to harvest.
16
17 Where the sticky point is and what you
18 brought up is there's no provision that I'm aware of to
19 allow people to bring food out to let's say relatives
20 in Fairbanks or Anchorage or whatever. So right now
21 the regulations do allow for folks to be invited to
22 come out, but the problem is there's no provisions in
23 the regulation to bring the food back to Fairbanks or
24 back to Anchorage, so that would be kind of the point
25 to hone in. I can help you when you develop their
26 proposal and try to hone in on that and focus it on
27 that. That's where there's a real gap in the
28 regulations right now.
29
30 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thank you. One of
31 the things that was discussed during the negotiations
32 that by invitation you're able to hunt out in your area
33 where you're from if you're invited by the tribal
34 council. It also assumed the fact that you're able to
35 bring back the waterfowl to be able to be eaten as food
36 for you. If we start regulating that, I think they
37 ought to start regulating grocery-bought or store-
38 bought food too as well because for many of our people
39 the land is the source of food for many of our people.
40
41
42 It seems like the Service is making
43 assumptions without any discussions with the Alaska
44 Migratory Bird Co-management Council on these things
45 that I think are not written and I think that we need
46 to sit down and identify those where Fish and Wildlife
47 Service or the State of Alaska are making assumptions
48 on these saying because it's silent on those things as
49 if to say that it's illegal to bring food back from the
50 villages and it seems like if you're doing it on
16
1 migratory birds it might end up being on everything
2 that you gather as a food source from within your
3 villages. So I don't agree with that interpretation.
4
5 MS. HEPA: I just wanted to support
6 those comments because in all the regions, in our
7 Native culture, it is a customary and traditional
8 practice for us to share resources. Many Alaska
9 Natives live in urban Alaska and it is a practice that
10 we have done for many years to share, to barter. When
11 we travel to Anchorage, we bring marine mammals,
12 caribou, birds. To create laws to stop us from doing
13 that is a shame and I think that we need to keep that
14 in our minds. We want to continue our traditional and
15 cultural practices and that is a big one to all of our
16 cultures.
17
18 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any other comments.
19 Enoch.
20
21 MR. SHIEDT: Yeah, I think it's
22 ridiculous where we can't send our relatives meat,
23 whatever, because we've been doing it, we've been
24 practicing it for years, that we share no matter where
25 our relatives are at. Legally, these are legally
26 caught birds, so what's the difference. It's just
27 wrong. When I send caribou, they're legally caught
28 caribou. When I do fish, it's legally caught fish and
29 birds too. So I think this is ridiculous. I'll
30 support that proposal or whatever comes up where we
31 could ship it.
32
33 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Joeneal.
34
35 MR. HICKS: I support the resolution
36 also. In our particular region, we are like border to
37 TCC region. In other words, the Copper River and the
38 Tok district I guess you could say. In the Tok
39 district we have relatives from Northway all the way up
40 to Healy to Dot Lake, et cetera, in that particular
41 area. We travel back and forth between Mentasta and
42 Northway or let's say Dot Lake, wherever it might be,
43 to harvest these birds. To do hunting activities let's
44 say. From what I understand it's saying I can't go
45 outside of my boundaries and take those birds back
46 home. Is that what I'm hearing? If that is so, there
47 seems to be something wrong with the regulations if
48 that's correct.
49
50 I do have relatives that live in
17
1 Fairbanks. They come home always during the summer.
2 They stay during the summer and then they go back to
3 Fairbanks for the winter and it's always my
4 understanding that when they do come to Mentasta, for
5 instance, they harvest these birds, they harvest the
6 fish, they harvest the meat, whatever it might be, they
7 take it home and I don't have a problem with that and
8 I've always seen it as a traditional use of food. When
9 regulations start saying that I can't do this, can't do
10 that, it really concerns me.
11
12 MS. DEWHURST: Just for clarification,
13 the regulations are silent on that point right now,
14 meaning it's not illegal and it's not legal. So an
15 enforcement officer couldn't technically enforce it
16 right now, but you also couldn't argue that it's
17 illegal activity. So right now we're kind of in limbo
18 on that. It's silent. We don't exactly address it.
19 We also don't say emphatically it's illegal. So it's
20 one of those deals where the regulations are silent on
21 it. They are clear that you can't invite somebody out,
22 but they're silent on barter or customary trade kind of
23 things.
24
25 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Enoch.
26
27 MR. SHIEDT: Yeah, the one you just
28 brought up there, I've got a concern about it. This
29 happened in Kotzebue where someone was bringing another
30 bird to another town. The guys at the airport will ask
31 what they have in their box and I tell them you don't
32 tell them that. The old man didn't understand. He
33 told them he had birds in there and the officers at the
34 -- what they call those, security people at the
35 airport, make him take his birds down. I told him you
36 have no reason. You are not the bird enforcer. I said
37 let him take it. To tell you the truth, I turned
38 around and I bought a box and I wrapped it in front of
39 the guy and he did not question me about it. I shipped
40 it for that old person here in Anchorage.
41
42 MS. DEWHURST: Within the included area
43 it's perfectly legal to trade, share, whatever. Where
44 we get into the gray area is sharing or giving outside
45 the included area, namely Anchorage, Fairbanks,
46 Southcentral. Any areas that are not in the included
47 area. The regulations are clear that you can trade,
48 share, barter within the included area. So that's
49 where the sticky part is, is going outside of the
50 included area, like Anchorage or Fairbanks. Just to
18
1 try to clarify what the regulations say right now.
2 That's where she could quite easily submit a proposal
3 and we can address this next year and try to clarify
4 it.
5
6 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Ida.
7
8 MS. HILDEBRAND: Thank you. Mr.
9 Chairman, this concerns me gravely. It's the
10 prerogative of the tribes to define their membership
11 and it's also the prerogative of tribes to define our
12 cultural traditions and practices. It is not the
13 prerogative of any agency, Federal or State, to define
14 who our membership are, what our membership are, or our
15 customary and traditional practices. That I believe is
16 part of the problem of both the Federal subsistence
17 program, the State of Alaska and this program, is to
18 allow by regulation to take away who we are as a
19 people. We are indigenous people. We have lived here
20 for millennia and we have cultural practices, beliefs,
21 spirituality and a myriad of values that come with our
22 hunting and gathering practices. I take great offense
23 that this is being regulated away from us. Thank you.
24
25 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any other comments?
26 Sandy.
27
28 MS. TAHBONE: Sandy Tahbone. This
29 issue -- I know how region was working on it because it
30 was an issue that was raised by this Council and I know
31 it was delegated to a committee of sorts. I know we
32 had discussions at the regional level and somewhere
33 along the line it just fell off the radar
34 it just fell off the radar. Other pressing issues just
35 took over its place, but I think it needs to be put
36 back on the table again.
37
38 I know we had -- within our region at
39 the meeting we had last week and we asked law
40 enforcement because I had heard from other regions that
41 this was becoming an issue with law enforcement and so
42 we asked our agent who's in charge of our area, what
43 the policy of law enforcement would be regarding people
44 -- non-residents harvesting under the spring and summer
45 as well as transport of the birds. So I think we
46 definitely need to put this back on the table.
47
48 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thank you, Sandy.
49 Dale.
50
19
1 MR. RABE: Thank you, Mr. Chair. We do
2 have a representative from enforcement and I don't want
3 to put him on the spot, but I do have a question
4 because I guess I haven't really thought about the
5 regulations governing these activities, but within
6 State regulation there are regulations that are
7 permissive unless excluded and they're also regulations
8 that are not allowed unless explicitly included. I
9 don't know in this case how the regulations exist when
10 a particular topic is not specifically identified, nor
11 how it's enforced when it falls into that category and
12 whether or not that's leading to some inconsistency, as
13 Lisa is pointing out.
14
15 If anybody has any technical
16 information to help enlighten that, I'd be interested.
17 It looks like Gary may be coming to the table.
18
19 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Dale, for putting him
20 on the spot, we'll welcome him up to the table.
21
22 MR. YOUNG: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
23 Dale. I'm Gary Young with the law enforcement office
24 here. I think Donna has addressed it pretty clearly as
25 you can be. It is a gray area and I'm not sure what
26 specific instances you're referring to where law
27 enforcement has checked the people at the airport or
28 wherever it might have been, but we can certainly look
29 into that. I'm assuming you were talking to Mike Wade
30 in Nome. It is a
31 practice and it's not explicitly these excluded areas.
32 It's not a priority for us to go looking for birds that
33 are being shipped for traditional uses. So I don't
34 know how else I can address what else Donna has already
35 said.
36
37 MR. RABE: Follow up.
38
39 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Go ahead
40
41 MR. RABE: Gary, with regards to the
42 more technical question, do you know, are these
43 regulations permissive unless specifically denied or
44 precluded?
45
46 MR. YOUNG: That's correct, yes. Under
47 the Migratory Bird Treat Act it usually specifically
48 defines what is illegal, not what is legal. What's the
49 legal method for taking a bird.
50
20
1 MR. RABE: So is it reasonable then
2 your interpretation would be that if these regulations
3 are moot on the point, then it's still legal.
4
5 MR. YOUNG: That's correct, yeah.
6
7 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Sandy.
8
9 MS. TAHBONE: My understanding is right
10 now if a law enforcement officer was to approach an
11 individual that obviously had been harvesting migratory
12 birds, the law enforcement officer can ask the
13 individual for his license, which would show his
14 residency and if that residency was Anchorage, so
15 obviously that's not -- you know, he's not a resident
16 from the area that's included within our regulations,
17 so he could be cited regardless of his affiliation with
18 any tribal government in that area or whether or not he
19 has permission from that tribal government to harvest
20 because we don't have a provision currently that
21 provides for that.
22
23 MR. YOUNG: That's correct.
24
25 MS. DEWHURST: There is an invitation
26 provision. They can be invited. That is not an
27 illegal activity, but they have to be able to
28 somehow.....
29
30 MS. TAHBONE: Show.
31
32 MS. DEWHURST: Well, they have to be
33 able to say I talked to tribal member so and so and I
34 was invited out. They don't have to have any written
35 proof, but just to be able to say that I was invited
36 by.....
37
38 MS. TAHBONE: Sandy?
39
40 MS. DEWHURST: Yeah, sure, Sandy of
41 Kawerak and that's all they would need to do.
42
43 MS. TAHBONE: Why would you have to
44 have of Kawerak?
45
46 MS. DEWHURST: I believe the right -- I
47 don't have them in front of me, but I believe they say
48 by the local tribal organization.
49
50 MS. TAHBONE: Yeah. What I'm saying
21
1 right now, we don't have any of that in place. So
2 technically they could be cited.
3
4 MS. DEWHURST: No, I don't think so.
5
6 CHAIRMAN NANENG: No, they cannot be.
7 They cannot be cited. We had a lot of discussion on
8 this during the negotiation of the Migratory Bird
9 Treaty. We were concerned about many of our fellow
10 members who may be living in Anchorage or Fairbanks or
11 elsewhere that would like to be able to eat some birds
12 during springtime or during the fall time, you know,
13 through the season when the birds are here. So the way
14 to get around that excluded area was to be able to have
15 an invitation by the tribal government from the village
16 where that individual is from.
17
18 We went through this back and forth for
19 a long time with other entities, like the Audubon
20 Society, Fish and Wildlife Service, the International
21 Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. It was
22 agreed by everyone that if you live in Anchorage or
23 elsewhere outside of the village, you can be invited to
24 come and hunt birds.
25
26 It was also assumed that if you hunt
27 birds, you're not necessarily hunting birds for just
28 the family in the village but you're also -- it was
29 also assumed that you'd be able to take those birds
30 back to wherever you're from and be able to eat them
31 because, you know, the Yup'ik cultures and Alaska
32 Native culture for that matter is always preparing for
33 the next season. The birds are only here for a certain
34 time period and you're preparing and storing food for
35 the winter or other times whenever you get tired of
36 eating McDonald's or other fast food stores or even
37 from Carrs. If you want food, it's a Native culture.
38 It helps the spirit of the individual. That was how we
39 came about this.
40
41 Thank God it was Jonathan Solomon from
42 Fort Yukon who thought of that idea of inviting people
43 because people were just trying to exclude Alaskan
44 Native people who live in urban centers from being able
45 to hunt and Jonathan Solomon had the wisdom to say
46 let's have an invitation provision on the Migratory
47 Bird Treaty to allow for our own people to come back
48 and hunt. As far as we understood, it did not preclude
49 them from being able to bring back the birds to
50 wherever they lived for them to eat. So that's the way
22
1 we understood and that's the way we came away from the
2 table.
3
4 It seems like because it's silent --
5 there seems to be assumptions by the agencies that
6 because it's silent it's illegal for people to go out
7 and hunt and bring back waterfowl for food. Is there a
8 law against eating food? As far as I know, there
9 isn't. And it seems like the Agency is picking out
10 things and saying it's illegal because it's silent on
11 that matter. We may have to deal with having to go
12 along with trying to clarify that so the Agency and law
13 enforcement can have a better idea of how to deal with
14 this issue. You can't assume that somebody is a
15 criminal under the probable cause unless you really
16 have -- unless somebody reported the fact that you
17 harvested something illegally.
18
19 It seems like as far as I'm concerned
20 an effort to reduce our subsistence activities for our
21 people to harvest migratory birds even though it was
22 legalized. So I'll just make those comments based on
23 what I know from the time that we were a party to the
24 negotiations back in the 1990s until 1997 when the
25 Migratory Bird Treaty Protocol Amendment was adopted.
26
27 MR. REFT: Mr. Chair. Yeah, John Reft.
28 It fine for us to
29 be at this table where we can discuss this and then we
30 could go back amongst ourselves saying, yeah, well, we
31 could do this and, you know, it wasn't right. But, Mr.
32 Young, our problem is protection officers that don't
33 know what the regulations are. When they stop you out
34 there when you know that you are in the right to do
35 something, then it becomes like a form of harassment
36 where they make you stop and you can't go on doing your
37 fish or your birds, whatever, and that to me is not
38 good.
39
40 Those officers, when they come out on
41 the ground, should know what is right and what is wrong
42 and not take up our time to argue with them and
43 eventually you end up packing up and going home because
44 the officer says you can't do this. You can go to the
45 Agency and they'll say, well, yeah, you can. Well, you
46 reprimand that officer. You teach them guys what their
47 duty is and what we're allowed to do and don't confront
48 us if you don't know what you're doing. That's
49 basically the problem I run into and I've seen. Thank
50 you.
23
1 MR. YOUNG: I agree with you 100
2 percent. Thank you for the comment.
3
4 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any more comments
5 regarding this? Sandy.
6
7 MS. TAHBONE: So I got two messages.
8 What I heard is, one, they won't get cited, but that's
9 not the way I understand it right now. Can you give me
10 your understanding if you were to encounter an
11 individual harvesting migratory birds in the spring in
12 Nome and they did not -- their residency showed that
13 they were not a resident of Nome or the surrounding
14 area and were a resident of Anchorage, what would the
15 action be?
16
17 MR. YOUNG: Relying on Donna's comments
18 and the specifics to invitational hunters, that person
19 would not be cited.
20
21 MS. TAHBONE: So how would you know
22 that they were invited?
23
24 MR. YOUNG: Donna can address that or,
25 as she's said, it can be.....
26
27 MS. TAHBONE: I mean she's not going to
28 be there. Your officer's there.
29
30 MR. YOUNG: That's right.
31
32 MS. TAHBONE: So it's between your
33 officer and the person that's harvesting.
34
35 MR. YOUNG: That's correct.
36
37 MS. TAHBONE: And if their
38 identification, what they're showing, whether it's on
39 their hunting license or driver's license or whatever
40 that they're having to show proof of residency to the
41 law enforcement officer and it shows they're a resident
42 of Anchorage, what is that officer going to do?
43
44 MR. YOUNG: Based on the regulation
45 that invitational
46 hunters are allowed, then the officer can determine if
47 that person has, in fact, been invited to hunt.
48
49 MS. DEWHURST: In these discussions,
50 and I'm relying on my memory because it's been several
24
1 years ago, there was discussion of having a card or
2 having to have written proof and this went round and
3 round and from what I remember people did not want to
4 have to go through that hassle of having to have --
5 while they were hunting having to have a letter with
6 them or having to have a card with them or having to
7 have some sort of written proof with them. So, from
8 what I remember, that was taken out. They didn't have
9 to have written proof with them while they were
10 hunting.
11
12 Verbal was okay and if the officer --
13 if that person said I was invited by Sandy Tahbone,
14 then that officer would have the prerogative to go back
15 and ask you did you invite them if they wanted to, if
16 they wanted to check up on it, but written proof was
17 not required specifically from what I remember. That
18 was a big issue that went round and round for I think
19 one or two years and that was the decision, was they
20 didn't want to have the burden of having to have a card
21 or a letter with them while they were hunting.
22
23 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Molly.
24
25 MS. CHYTHLOOK: Thank you. Molly
26 Chythlook. So many of our
27 regulations, both State and Federal, seem to try to
28 coincide with each others. I know with the State and
29 Federal regulations so many times they try to get them
30 to work together. With this issue, maybe because
31 sports hunting people are in right with everything they
32 do, the subsistence hunters are having to meet so many
33 do's and don'ts, and the sporthunting hunters seem like
34 they're just silent. We haven't discussed any issues
35 about them. We don't even know what they harvest and
36 they're able to harvest birds and just take the breasts
37 and throw the rest of the food away. So I think that
38 there needs to be an equal footing on how the sports
39 hunting regulations are treated versus subsistence
40 regulations.
41
42 It's so disheartening to sit here and
43 listen to all of this and then to have to go back to
44 our communities and our regional reps to try to explain
45 all these inconsistencies that are happening between
46 our subsistence harvesters and other harvesters that
47 are also here to harvest for food. So I think we need
48 to take a look at this. I know that it's a heartache
49 to have all these do's and don'ts for subsistence
50 hunters that are here to harvest, they've harvested
25
1 forever, we don't waste and we eat everything that are
2 harvested versus de-boning and just taking breasts for
3 food use. Thank you.
4
5 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Enoch.
6
7 MR. SHIEDT: Yeah, this is a touchy
8 issue in my area also because I'm surrounded by Federal
9 lands, yet the agencies are talking with the troopers
10 that if they don't have duck stamp, they're going to
11 start citing them. I tell them it wasn't in place yet,
12 but it was done by solicitors here years ago when we
13 had a concern about it and they enforce it. It's not
14 really you guys, it's what we all see is happening in
15 our town. It's happening to people. The state
16 troopers are doing the citations and stuff like that.
17 Not only that, the Federal Park Service, different
18 land, they've got enforcers also. We're being covered
19 and they're pushing it and we didn't want it to begin
20 with.
21
22 It's an issue also when they ship birds
23 out of town. I could go to Carrs right now and buy
24 young birds and take it to Kotzebue. To me what you're
25 saying is it's okay for Carrs to sell birds and yet we
26 put food on the table and we purchase it, yet we can't
27 ship it to my relatives somewhere else.
28
29 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any other comments on
30 this issue. Peter.
31
32 MR. DEVINE: Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair.
33 It's pretty interesting because in our regional
34 teleconference we had for Aleutian Pribilof region, we
35 invited the refuge manager to participate. One of the
36 things she wanted to know was is it okay for a person
37 from Iowa who lives in Cold Bay one month out of the
38 year able to participate in our subsistence harvest for
39 spring and summer. I told her no. So then she said,
40 well, if he's here for two months out of the year, can
41 he participate, and he's like no. So then she went on,
42 well, if he's participating, how do I identify him.
43 They said, well, if he has an out-of-state ID card, you
44 better be asking him for his duck stamp and his hunting
45 license. I mean this is from a refuge manager, so it's
46 kind of crazy. But I told them that we're working on
47 some form of identification, you know, tribal member
48 card or something.
49
50 But I guess they're out there actively
26
1 looking for people. They wanted to know about the
2 regulation book and I told her it's the same as the
3 year before and we touched on the Brant issue that she
4 was not aware of on why we shorten up that season. I
5 mean it should be right there in their files. I'll
6 touch more on this later. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
7
8 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thank you, Peter.
9 Any more comments regarding the issue raised by Tanana
10 Chiefs. Sandy.
11
12 MS. TAHBONE: So how are we going to
13 deal with their request? I heard Donna say one thing
14 about helping them with the regulation or drafting a
15 regulation. How are we going to deal with this issue?
16
17 CHAIRMAN NANENG: One of the things
18 that I've learned over
19 the years in working with the migratory bird issues and
20 I've been involved with AVCP since about 1984, if the
21 law is silent on one of these issues you continue to
22 practice your traditional customary and tradition and
23 that's the way that we've always lived, but if law
24 enforcement is coming around, I don't know if this is
25 trying to enforce this. Because it's silent it's
26 creating an issue that I don't think should necessarily
27 create an issue. Like I stated earlier, I don't think
28 we need to be regulated to death on everything that we
29 do. Eventually they'll start regulating us and asking
30 us to have license to go to the bathroom. That can be
31 as bad.....
32
33 MS. HILDEBRAND: We already have a
34 code.
35
36 CHAIRMAN NANENG: So I would rather
37 that we not have as regulations. And that code number
38 is one thing that is regulating you already in a
39 Federal building or Federally leased building for that
40 matter.
41
42 MS. TAHBONE: Mr. Chairman. I think at
43 a minimum though we
44 should at least have a law enforcement policy regarding
45 this so that we have an understanding and our
46 harvesters have an understanding of how law enforcement
47 is going to deal with this issue.
48
49 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Ida.
50
27
1 MS. HILDEBRAND: Thank you, Mr.
2 Chairman. I agree we
3 shouldn't be regulated to death. As far as this issue,
4 to me it seems it is the responsibility of law
5 enforcement to inform their personnel that the issue is
6 moot, that this is allowed, and if they have concern,
7 law enforcement can contact the local tribe. Thank
8 you.
9
10 MS. DEWHURST: I was just inform by
11 Colleen that they're
12 going to shut off the water for about 45 minutes to an
13 hour and
14 so this might be a good time to take a five minute
15 bathroom
16 break.
17
18 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Then we'll take a
19 five minute break and I think one of the things that we
20 need to do is that law enforcement should inform their
21 law enforcers that if it's silent that shouldn't try
22 and create an issue because one of the things that
23 we're trying to do is work cooperatively and co-manage
24 the migratory bird issue and when things like this come
25 up without informing the Alaska Migratory Bird Co-
26 management Council creates problems and issues that we
27 have to deal with and that ends up being like a co-
28 management, so I think that's a reasonable request.
29
30 With that we'll take a five-minute
31 break. Remember the code and the regulation.
32
33 (Off record)
34
35 (On record)
36
37 CHAIRMAN NANENG: We'll go ahead and
38 call the meeting back to order. I hope everyone was
39 able to remember the codes to the restrooms and take
40 care of business. Any more discussion on the Tanana
41 Chiefs discussion regarding checking of bags for
42 hunters that were invited or have gone out to their
43 villages to hunt birds. Lisa.
44
45 MS. KANGAS: Mr. Chair. Thank you
46 everyone for your input. Right now I'm going to take
47 this information back and get in touch with the author
48 of this resolution. I was just wondering what you
49 guys's stance, your regions, on this issue. Do you
50 think that we should put down a minimum -- I don't want
28
1 to say regulation, but just an awareness for the entire
2 state as far as this issue goes.
3
4 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Anybody has any
5 comments to that? Ida.
6
7 MS. HILDEBRAND: An awareness, do you
8 mean like a statement in the regulations, if the
9 regulations are silent, then it's an acceptable action?
10
11 MS. KANGAS: Yes, yes, and then just to
12 keep it statewide.
13
14 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any comments from the
15 state representative
16 on this issue?
17
18 MR. RABE: No, Mr. Chairman.
19
20 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Eric, from the
21 Federal side, any comments?
22
23 MR. TAYLOR: No comment.
24
25 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thank you. We'll
26 request that staff from AMBCC coordinate and maybe,
27 Donna, you can make that part of the communications
28 with the regional organization as well as with the Fish
29 and Wildlife Service as well as the State as well.
30 Thank you, Lisa.
31
32 Any other regional reports or updates.
33
34 MR. HICKS: Mr. Chair.
35
36 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Joeneal.
37
38 MR. HICKS: Mr. Chair, I have a report.
39 The Copper River Region held a meeting on March 12th.
40 These are some of the action items that was done. One,
41 we adopted a set of bylaws that actually officially
42 recognizes the Copper River Migratory Bird Subsistence
43 Committee. There was discussion on predator control
44 concerning fox and owl of migratory birds and their
45 eggs and we wanted some study to that effect to see how
46 much predation is occurring between fox and owl on
47 migratory birds and their eggs.
48
49 There was a question on the permanent
50 hunting license for those who are 60 years or older.
29
1 Are they required to hold any duck stamp? I believe I
2 already got that answer, but I want to defer that to
3 somebody else who would answer that question to this
4 entire body because I believe there is a question there
5 in that regards as to whether it's legal to not have a
6 hunting license or a Federal duck stamp and a State
7 duck stamp if you're over age 60. In other words, if
8 you're over age 60, you hold a permanent hunting
9 license, and is that required. So I would leave that
10 to the representative to answer that question when I
11 get through with my report.
12
13 The regional committee also said that
14 they would advocate for a fall subsistence migratory
15 bird hunt. They asked that we look into grants for
16 educating the community or the use in regards to the
17 harvest of migratory birds such as identifying them,
18 gun safety, subsistence representation, building more
19 youth awareness and even making a video to that effect.
20
21
22 Last year with the grant that we have
23 we held a youth camping trip. In other words, taking
24 youths out into the field to teach them how to harvest
25 and use migratory birds as well as any other kind of
26 game animals that we come up on. In other words, the
27 idea was to take them out there without pop, no candy,
28 no cell phone, whatever and just pretty much try to
29 live off the land and learn from that particular trip.
30 It was successful; however, the camp was too close to I
31 guess you could say a village or a highway and the kids
32 tended to take off when it came to evening, like 6:00
33 or 7:00, and come back next morning. So we have to
34 think about someplace else where they can't do that.
35 Anyhow, it was pretty successful. I'd say 75 percent
36 successful. We're going to do it again, only this time
37 we're going to have it on the Denali Highway.
38
39 The region also requested that there be
40 made available in each of the village offices a map of
41 boundaries that actually show the included area where
42 people -- I mean if they're in this circle, they're
43 eligible to harvest. They would like to have that
44 particular map and a big picture in their office that
45 shows the boundaries and also a poster that shows what
46 birds are open to harvest, closed or of concern.
47
48 The other thing that was addressed was
49 climate change. People in the region are really
50 concerned about it. Lakes are drying up, ponds are
30
1 drying up, et cetera, et cetera. That's my report.
2
3 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any questions from
4 the Council members for Joeneal?
5
6 (No comments)
7
8 CHAIRMAN NANENG: If not, thanks, Joe,
9 for your report. Any comments regarding the permanent
10 hunting license issue.
11
12 MR. YOUNG: I'll address the question
13 as to the Federal duck stamp. It would be anyone 16
14 years of age or older and there is no upper limit on
15 it.
16
17 MR. REFT: Mr. Chair.
18
19 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Go ahead, Dan.
20
21 MR. REFT: I'm not clear on the
22 Federal. In Kodiak, we buy the State up until you're
23 60 and then you don't buy the State, but we still have
24 to buy the Federal stamp. I hunt them, $15, and he's
25 telling me outside that it's not mandatory that we buy
26 the Federal stamp. This is the first time I ever heard
27 about it because we buy it. You can see right now 2010
28 or I couldn't hunt them.
29
30 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Do you want me to
31 respond to that? Maybe I can ask -- I'll respond to
32 that after we hear from Dan.
33
34 MR. ROSENBERG: Thank you. Dan
35 Rosenberg. The State duck stamp requirements -- I'll
36 just give you all the requirements for all the ages and
37 just to clarify the whole thing. It is required unless
38 you are an Alaska resident under the age of 16, an
39 Alaska resident 60 years old or older, you're a
40 disabled veteran eligible for a free license, or you
41 qualify for a low income license, which means the
42 qualifications for a low income license or residence
43 with an annual family income below $8,200 before taxes,
44 then you're eligible for a $5 low income hunting
45 license and you don't need the duck stamp. That's the
46 State $5 duck stamp.
47
48 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thanks. Any
49 questions from the Council members to Dan?
50
31
1 (No comments)
2
3 MR. ROSENBERG: Thank you.
4
5 CHAIRMAN NANENG: In response to John,
6 like I stated before, at the time that we negotiated
7 the Migratory Bird Treaty Protocol Amendment we never
8 had any discussions regarding the duck stamp because as
9 far as our people were concerned they never needed it
10 prior to. There was a question that was raised by I
11 think Fish and Wildlife Service back before 2001 asking
12 the solicitor for an opinion if it was required under
13 the Migratory Bird Treaty Protocol Amendment.
14 Apparently the decision by the solicitor was that it
15 was required.
16
17 We at AVCP questions that and we have a
18 document that we sent to them back in 2001 saying that
19 the Migratory Bird Treaty Protocol Amendment is silent
20 on the requirement of a duck stamp and therefore it's
21 not necessary. Also the fact that this treaty between
22 Canada, U.S., Mexico and Japan and many of the treaties
23 with the American Indians do not have the requirement
24 for duck stamps, with treaties between Indian tribes
25 and U.S. government, and we feel that in our review
26 that this seems to be the first time that the U.S.
27 government is requiring a treaty under a legalized hunt
28 for Alaska Native people to be able to hunt migratory
29 birds during spring and summer hunts.
30
31 We still don't agree with that
32 solicitor's opinion. We're dealing with it and if
33 you've fought duck stamps over the years, our position
34 from AVCP is that we don't think it's required. We
35 feel that it's not necessary and required to have a
36 duck stamp. So I'm just sharing with you what we've
37 been working on over the years since 2001.
38
39 Molly.
40
41 MS. CHYTHLOOK: Did you say the duck
42 stamp requirement is
43 silent?
44
45 CHAIRMAN NANENG: On the Migratory Bird
46 Treaty Protocol Amendment at the time that we were
47 negotiating it, it's silent in the Migratory Bird
48 Treaty regarding the duck stamp requirement for the
49 legalized hunt by Alaska Native people during spring
50 and summer hunt. At that time we did not think it was
32
1 an issue we would be dealing with. Apparently the
2 solicitor who wrote that opinion saying that it's
3 required now, but we're working on trying to get that
4 reconsidered. As far as we're concerned from AVCP, our
5 position has been that a duck stamp is not required.
6 Even the solicitor's opinion that was issued in 2001 we
7 question it because we feel that there's no requirement
8 and it's a treaty between the U.S. government, Alaska
9 Natives and Canada.
10
11 In Canada, they don't even require it
12 as far as we know. In Canada, it's the Native people
13 who can set their seasons and bag limits. In Alaska,
14 it seems like we're pretty much under the whim of the
15 Federal government in being able to set their spring
16 migratory hunt hunting season. It seems like we're
17 being treated differently than our neighbors in Canada.
18
19 Any other questions. Taqulik.
20
21 MS. HEPA: At least from the North
22 Slope -- I think this is a good time to bring it up. I
23 was going to bring it up later during the duck stamp
24 discussion on the agenda. Over the last several months
25 there has been talk across the North Slope about the
26 duck stamp and the potential for them to start writing
27 citations or violations. So our Fish and Game
28 Management Committee, who is the regional advisory for
29 this co-management council has opposed the requirement
30 for duck stamps, hunting licenses and so on. So we
31 have that and we reaffirmed it in August of '09, so
32 that's still standing.
33
34 In addition, our North Slope Borough
35 Assembly, who is our regional local government body,
36 they also passed a recent resolution at their March or
37 April monthly meeting, so I have a copy of that. Then
38 our regional tribal government, the Inupiat Community
39 of the Arctic Slope, also passed a similar resolution
40 in opposition for Alaska Natives to have duck stamps.
41 So I just wanted to bring that out.
42
43 We support the positions of AVCP.
44
45 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thank you. Any other
46 regional reports or questions for Joeneal before we go
47 to another region? Eric.
48
49 MR. TAYLOR: Joeneal, I was wondering
50 if you could clarify relative to the concern about fox
33
1 and owl predation on migratory birds. What species of
2 birds were people concerned with? Did they specify?
3 Was it waterfowl or was it other passerine birds or any
4 idea?
5
6 MR. HICKS: I gathered it was
7 waterfowl, specifically
8 Mallards.
9
10 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any other regional
11 reports? Peter.
12
13 MR. DEVINE: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
14 Just to touch on what I did earlier. We had our
15 meeting on April 8th, a teleconference for the
16 Aleutian/Pribilof Region. We invited the Refuge
17 manager and she was looking for some sort of
18 identification for local hunters and I told her that
19 we're working on that.
20
21 I just got off the phone with Stanley
22 and as far as this MOU he thought it would be better if
23 the borough, the City of King Cove and somebody from
24 Migratory Bird Council, Fish and Wildlife Service, all
25 sit down in a meeting or teleconference and familiarize
26 themselves with this. He said that as of today the
27 borough, City of King Cover, the Tribe of King Cove,
28 nobody has signed off on it. So he would ask that we
29 hold off until everyone is more familiar with where
30 this process is.
31
32 That's it for my report.
33
34 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thank you, Peter.
35 Any other regions have any reports? Molly.
36
37 MS. CHYTHLOOK: March 30 we had our
38 regional meeting, but
39 the only agency that was at our meeting was the Togiak
40 National Wildlife Refuge, Paul and John. There was
41 several discussions. The Council did go over the 2008
42 harvest survey data and they approved the data. There
43 was a couple of notes about high harvest of eggs and
44 birds mainly in Togiak. Other than that they approved
45 the 2008 harvest survey data.
46
47 The duck stamp issue was discussed. I
48 know that BBNA and even the Council in the past have
49 passed a resolution in support of the duck stamp issue,
50 that this Council and Y-K have been dealing with, and
34
1 they are not in support of the duck stamp issues, but
2 they decided until the issue is resolved that they'll
3 abide by whatever duck stamps -- I guess purchasing
4 duck stamps, except that, as usual, we have a problem
5 with obtaining duck stamps over there even though it's
6 readily available through the internet, a lot of our
7 community members don't own computers and the only main
8 computers with a lot of the communities that work are
9 some of our council computers and those are mainly used
10 for their businesses.
11
12 The issues that were noted were the
13 lead shot -- not the lead shot, but I guess when some
14 of our member harvesters harvest these birds with tags
15 on them, the people were afraid to report thinking that
16 they might get into trouble. So the council
17 recommended the agencies to further educate the
18 communities about the birds that have been harvested,
19 the tagged harvested, and that they wouldn't get into
20 trouble and direct them to a proper place to report
21 these tagged birds when they're harvested.
22
23 Then, as usual, people are starting to
24 report more and more strange birds like some of you,
25 increase of birds that they don't normally see in their
26 area, and then the Alaska peninsula communities
27 reported that after 20 years, the Valdez oil spill,
28 they are finally starting to see an increase of Eiders,
29 King Eiders, in their area as well as other migratory
30 bird resources.
31
32 I've got the written report in the
33 back, so I'm not going to cover everything that's in
34 here. That's all I have.
35
36 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thanks, Molly. Any
37 questions for Molly from other members.
38
39 (No comments)
40
41 CHAIRMAN NANENG: I'll make a report of
42 what we've been doing at AVCP. Two years ago we had a
43 meeting down in Portland in April of the Waterfowl
44 Conservation Committee. The purpose of the meeting was
45 to review and renewal of the Goose Management Plan. We
46 were negotiating with the Fish and Wildlife Service law
47 enforcement on participation of villages in the law
48 enforcement section of the Goose Management Plan. We
49 finally as of March came to an agreement that's
50 acceptable to both Fish and Wildlife Service, law
35
1 enforcement and AVCP. The Goose Management Plan was
2 adopted by the Waterfowl Conservation Committee last
3 week on Friday after review of the language that we had
4 been working on for almost two years.
5
6 Last week we traveled to Washington
7 D.C. to meet with the Department of Interior and try
8 and set up a meeting with the solicitor regarding the
9 review of the duck stamp requirement and we're going to
10 be having a teleconference on Friday with the solicitor
11 and some of her staff along with BIA and Department of
12 Interior to review the duck stamp requirement. So I'd
13 invite all the Regional Council members from here
14 around the table who are members of the Alaska
15 Migratory Bird Co-management Council to participate in
16 the teleconference.
17
18 We have also tried to meet with our
19 congressional delegation and looking at options of how
20 to potentially delete or not require the duck stamp
21 during spring and summer hunts for our people out in
22 the villages. So we need our Alaska Migratory Bird Co-
23 management Council to participate in that and provide
24 input. Our congressional delegation feels that it's
25 going to create some issues and problems in many of our
26 villages in the Y-K Delta if the duck stamp is enforced
27 this spring.
28
29 The efforts that we've had over the
30 years to work with Fish and Wildlife Service and State
31 of Alaska and other states is going to be in jeopardy
32 based on the fact that if there's going to be a large
33 number of citations issued for duck stamps, it's going
34 to be a problem. It's going to create a problem. I
35 know that law enforcement and the regional office have
36 stated to us that it's not going to be a priority for
37 them to issue citations for duck stamp, but the
38 priority will be the restricted species, Emperor Geese
39 and Spectacled Eiders will be the priority.
40
41 Also the use of lead shot will be
42 enforced too as well. But we are still concerned that
43 many of our people are going to be cited this coming
44 summer because we've been told by Fish and Wildlife
45 Service and law enforcement that after about three
46 years of trying to delay the enforcement they may be
47 forced to enforce the duck stamp requirement. But
48 we've been working on it for the last few years and
49 trying to get the requirement waived or not enforced so
50 that our people out in the villages will continue to
36
1 hunt like they've done since we started sitting down to
2 come up with agreements of co-management on the species
3 that became of concern back in 1984.
4
5 We're also going to have to work with
6 another issue that's coming up, is working with our
7 partner, state of Oregon, on their goose depredation of
8 farmlands. I think it's gotten to the point of almost
9 becoming push coming to shove. We're going to try and
10 work with them because it's going to put some
11 limitation and restrictions on our hunters out in the
12 Y-K Delta where many of the Cackling Canada Geese come
13 during spring and summer time.
14
15 So those are things that we're working
16 on at AVCP with our Waterfowl Conservation Committee
17 and I think that we're inviting all our cohorts in the
18 Alaska Migratory Bird Co-management Council to join us
19 in a teleconference on Friday. So that's the extent of
20 my report. Any questions. Peter.
21
22 MR. DEVINE: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Do
23 you have the teleconference number?
24
25 CHAIRMAN NANENG: I'll have to pull out
26 my computer or my.....
27
28 MS. CHYTHLOOK: Mr. Chair. I've got
29 the number.
30
31 CHAIRMAN NANENG: I provided it to
32 them. Maybe they'll read it off.
33
34 MS. CHYTHLOOK: It's 1-866-723-7478
35 code number 1572466#. Mr. Chair, we didn't get the
36 time of the conference.
37
38 CHAIRMAN NANENG: 12:00 Alaska time and
39 Washington D.C. time will be at 4:00 o'clock in the
40 afternoon.
41
42 MS. HEPA: I might just want to add too
43 that we need to notify Sky to let him know if you'll be
44 calling in so that he can make sure that there are
45 enough lines for everyone to call in. That was one of
46 the instructions we had.
47
48 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Yes. Ida.
49
50 MS. HILDEBRAND: Thank you, Mr.
37
1 Chairman. I just wanted to report that Chugach
2 Regional Resources met on the 6th and are in support of
3 the AVCP action in opposition to the duck stamp
4 requirement.
5
6 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any other regional
7 reports. Go ahead, Sandy.
8
9 MS. TAHBONE: Mr. Chair. The Bering
10 Strait/Norton Sound Migratory Bird Council met last
11 week and I have several issues of concern and requests
12 from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as well as
13 AMBCC, but I would like to provide that report tomorrow
14 morning. I'm still waiting on a couple documents from
15 the office.
16
17 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Okay. Any other
18 Council members on regional reports. Enoch.
19
20 MR. SHIEDT: I don't have any. I'm
21 back on my job now and I have nothing to report on
22 migratory bird for Maniilaq service area.
23
24 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thanks, Enoch.
25 Taqulik.
26
27 MS. HEPA: I'll just add a few things.
28 Over the last couple years we've beefed up our outreach
29 and education on migratory bird hunting, in particular
30 towards the Stellar's Eider. We recently held a
31 migratory bird fair and we're hoping that we'll have
32 this on an annual basis, maybe twice a year, where the
33 community comes in to learn facts about birds and have
34 an opportunity to interact not just with our local
35 leaders but Fish and Wildlife Service Staff was there
36 as well as Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
37
38 It was a good success. I'd say maybe
39 100 people came through that evening. It was held in
40 the evening at the high school. We heard a lot of good
41 feedback from that. We got to have some geese and duck
42 soup we served to the people. It was just wonderful.
43
44 We are also doing a number of radio
45 talk shows. We have a weekly radio talk show where
46 people can call in from the North Slope communities.
47 The topic will be migratory bird hunting. We had one
48 earlier this winter. We have another one scheduled at
49 the end of April and then later on at the end of May
50 just to talk about issues and to interact with our
38
1 hunters about migratory birds.
2
3 As you may be aware, we formed a
4 migratory bird task force and it includes the North
5 Slope Borough, Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope
6 Native Village, our village corporation Ukpeagvik
7 Inupiat Corporation. Through that the Native Village
8 of Barrow has formed a young hunters program. Joe Sage
9 is the wildlife director for Native Village, so he's
10 initiated a young hunter's program to mentor students
11 from the high school and middle school to teach them
12 respectful traditional ways of hunting, so it's a very
13 positive program. He's been actively visiting the
14 schools to promote that.
15
16 As well as our staff has gone to
17 different schools, not just in Barrow but in the
18 communities, to talk about Eider issues. So I just
19 wanted to report our outreach.
20
21 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thank you, Taqulik.
22 Any questions for Taqulik from other members? Sandy.
23
24 MS. TAHBONE: Just a quick question.
25 What kind of support are you getting from the Service
26 regarding your outreach efforts?
27
28 MS. HEPA: Through the Chair. Thank
29 you, Sandy. Actually Michael Pederson has taken a lead
30 role on our outreach and he's been coordinating with
31 Neesha (ph) from the Endangered Species Division of
32 Fish and Wildlife Service. It was a slow start, but I
33 think we're making positive progress in coordinating
34 our outreach efforts.
35
36 MS. TAHBONE: Excuse me, Mr. Chairman.
37 I was speaking in regards to as far as funding to be
38 able to help you with doing all the work that you're
39 doing up there.
40
41 MS. HEPA: Since Michael takes the
42 lead, I think I'll ask him to come up and emphasize
43 that one.
44
45 MR. PEDERSON: Mr. Chair. Thank you,
46 Sandy. The Fish and Wildlife Service in the Endangered
47 Species Office is providing us
48 funding for steel shot exchange. They're also
49 providing us promotional materials and stuff like that
50 for our Stellar's Eiders outreach stuff, caps and mugs
39
1 and stuff like that to help spread the conservation
2 message for Stellar's Eiders. Other than that, we're
3 doing a lot of the leg work on the ground and stuff
4 like that. We're editing some of the posters that
5 they've put up to make it more coming from the
6 subsistence community. But they don't give us any
7 funding to do the work, but they're giving us funding
8 to get materials out to our people.
9
10 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any other questions.
11
12 MS. TAHBONE: Yeah, I had a question to
13 the Federal representative regarding this. Has there
14 been any discussion regarding prioritizing of funding
15 to be able to dedicate for outreach efforts as far as
16 being able to provide resources to each of our --
17 particularly to the regions where they're having to
18 deal with serious outreach conservation issues. I'm
19 really concerned with our inability to provide
20 personnel in order to cover our efforts, so I'm
21 wondering if there's been any discussion at the Alaska
22 region level in regards to prioritizing funding to be
23 able to provide funds to the regions for covering
24 personal costs.
25
26 MR. TAYLOR: Thanks, Sandy. I'm not
27 aware of any specific discussions relative to proposals
28 that our office may have received either from the North
29 Slope Borough or from Kawerak in terms of specific
30 outreach projects that have been funded. I know we
31 funded, I believe, yourself as well as Austin in terms
32 of doing harvest surveys on the St. Lawrence Island
33 area and I believe there's been some outreach in terms
34 of a position up in the North Slope Borough, I believe,
35 for outreach. But other than that I'm not aware of any
36 other specific proposals.
37
38 MS. TAHBONE: Mr. Chairman. I'll be
39 covering some of this in my report, but we don't have
40 the luxury, we don't have the staff to be able to do
41 the coordinating for outreach activities. The only way
42 that work is going to get done is if the Service
43 determines it is a priority and puts the funds there in
44 order for us to complete the work.
45
46 MR. TAYLOR: I will mention in terms of
47 conservation recommendations for Yellow-billed Loons
48 and perhaps Tamara may be able to add to what I'm going
49 to say, but in terms of conservation measures that were
50 associated with the subsistence for 2010 that the
40
1 Service agreed and it's on Page 62 of the Intra-Service
2 Biological Opinion.
3
4 The Service will continue education,
5 communication and outreach programs. This is in
6 particular reference to Yellow-billed Loons. And that
7 we will develop partnerships with local residents,
8 subsistence hunters, landowners and many others.
9 Continue dialogue and build partnerships with residents
10 on St. Lawrence Island, delivery of conservation
11 measures about loons, continue to work with Kawerak on
12 education and outreach such as loon identification
13 guides, posters and products, and then acquire a set of
14 study skins of loons in different plumages.
15
16 So it seems to me that there's
17 opportunities there for Kawerak to work with the
18 Service in terms of specific proposals and ideas for
19 funding.
20
21 MS. TAHBONE: Mr. Chairman. Eric.
22 Yeah, I've read through those and we've had a lot of
23 discussion, we've had meetings. There's
24 representatives both from Gambell and Savoonga here.
25 Like I said, I'll touch on these within my report, but
26 what I'm saying is that in order for us to accomplish
27 those it takes people, manpower in order to address
28 them. As we are right now, we do not have funds and
29 any agreement that provides us with those dollars to
30 dedicate man hours to accomplish those tasks.
31
32 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Taqulik.
33
34 MS. HEPA: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I
35 want to support Sandy on that. As it stands, the Fish
36 and Wildlife Service does not fund an outreach person,
37 so it is in kind from the North Slope Borough, but we
38 have expressed that concern and I think we have
39 expressed it at this forum in the past. Outreach
40 really goes a long way. The AMBCC needs to look at
41 funding to provide outreach funding for salaries for
42 each of the regions. It can only help with the issues
43 that we're faced with today so we can get the message
44 out to the hunters.
45
46 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thank you. I think
47 one of the things we
48 need to consider as Alaska Migratory Bird Co-management
49 Council and also work with the Fish and Wildlife
50 Service is to request a direct congressional
41
1 appropriation for Alaska Migratory Bird Co-management
2 Council and we'll need to coordinate that with Fish and
3 Wildlife Service.
4
5 All the funding right now that goes to
6 the Alaska Migratory Bird Co-management Council and
7 also the regional working groups is funneled through
8 Fish and Wildlife Service. On the average, we all are
9 getting like about $26,000 for a project that really
10 enhances the work that Fish and Wildlife does.
11
12 Like a couple of weeks ago or about a
13 month ago we went to Quinhagak to attend a meeting with
14 the village on the duck stamp requirement. We have two
15 refuges we have to work with, the Togiak and Bethel or
16 Y-K Delta National Wildlife Refuge, and AVCP tries to
17 attend as many of those meetings to express our views
18 regarding the duck stamp issue and we're not funded to
19 travel to these meetings from the Fish and Wildlife
20 Service, but we're funding them out of our natural
21 resource program within AVCP where we get those funding
22 from BIA Natural Resource Program. But the BIA Natural
23 Resource Program is supposed to be used for trust land
24 informational purposes, but we've used those funds at
25 our discretion at AVCP.
26
27 So I think that we will need to work
28 together to get a direct appropriation with the support
29 of Fish and Wildlife Service and also the State of
30 Alaska and we can make that as one of the things that
31 we can request for even with our discussion with both
32 BIA and our congressional delegation in the very near
33 future.
34
35 We've made comments in the past that we
36 think that Alaska Migratory Bird Co-management Council
37 should be funded separately from Fish and Wildlife
38 Service so that we'll be able to get some of our issues
39 put on the table rather than having to go through Fish
40 and Wildlife Service in order to put the issues forward
41 on the table as the Alaska Migratory Bird Co-management
42 Council. So I'd request everyone to give that some
43 thought and consideration as one of the projects to be
44 pushed forth with the Alaska Migratory Bird Co-
45 management Council issues. Sandy.
46
47 MS. TAHBONE: Mr. Chairman. Yeah, the
48 delegation from the AMBCC to Washington this past
49 cycle, we did make visits to our congressional
50 delegation and we did make those requests. As you
42
1 know, we've been making pretty much that request
2 annually, but we have yet to see any action, whether it
3 be from our congressional delegation or from the
4 Service from either the secretary's office on down to
5 the people that are partners here at the table.
6
7 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thank you. We'll
8 make sure we'll start
9 working on that as one of the issues to be dealt with.
10 You know, you don't get very far with the congressional
11 delegation unless you get support of Department of
12 Interior and if that Department of Interior does not
13 have any objections and they support you in that
14 effort, then it will go forward.
15
16 The other thing too is that we can
17 raise this issue up at our next trip to D.C. I know
18 that we have to also meet with the Alaska
19 Representative John Catch as part of the request and
20 many of the things that we request funding for also
21 have to have the support of the Alaska state
22 representative in Washington, D.C. We've been moving
23 with some of these issues that we're bringing forth,
24 like the duck stamp, and we've gotten the support of
25 the Alaska office, but all they need to do is express
26 their concern or express their support either in
27 writing or by phone call to our congressional
28 delegation and they will move forward.
29
30 One of the things that we've learned
31 over the past year is that you have to be in contact
32 with the right people to move things forward.
33 Sometimes the staff or congressional delegation may not
34 necessarily be the right people because they're so busy
35 with things they have to do, so they have to contact a
36 wide variety of people and not just talk to one person.
37
38 If the AMBCC feels that we should
39 pursue that, I think we ought to make that one of the
40 priorities for this coming year, to try and get more
41 funding for the Regional Councils to support the
42 efforts that we're working on to provide information
43 and also to work with our villages in terms of the
44 waterfowl conservation that our people have had to live
45 with for centuries, but we're now working with partners
46 from outside the region as well as outside the --
47 within the state and even outside of the state of
48 Alaska. So it's a partnership effort.
49
50 With that, if there's no objection from
43
1 the AMBCC, I think that we can make that as part of our
2 priorities to do a direct funding request for Alaska
3 Migratory Bird Co-management Council. You know, if it
4 can be put in the form of a motion. I hope that our
5 Federal or State representatives will not say that they
6 don't have any authority to say yes or no on that. So
7 if someone can make that motion, we can make that as
8 part of the work we can pursue under the Alaska
9 Migratory Bird Co-management Council.
10
11 MS. TAHBONE: Mr. Chairman. Within my
12 report there's a
13 document I will be sharing and it's a letter in
14 response to an issue that the AFN regarding funding for
15 our efforts. So maybe if we can maybe hold off on that
16 motion because we could use some of the language that's
17 within that document. So I'll go ahead and maybe make
18 that motion later.
19
20 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Okay. I don't think
21 that will be a
22 problem. Any more regional reports.
23
24 (No comments)
25
26 CHAIRMAN NANENG: If there's no more
27 regional reports, we'll go on to the next item on the
28 agenda under old business, item number 10A. Fred
29 Armstrong is here in spirit but not in person, so who
30 makes that report on his behalf? Is that you, Eric?
31
32 MR. TAYLOR: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I
33 did speak with Taqulik in terms of this agenda item. I
34 believe Fred or Doug yesterday covered the conservation
35 measures associated with the proposed hunt, but I'll
36 ask Taqulik if there was additional information that
37 was requested.
38
39 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Did you request to
40 remove this off the agenda?
41
42 MS. HEPA: Yeah. I wasn't aware or
43 wasn't prepared to present anything. I'm not sure what
44 Fred or Doug were hoping to present. Just quickly, we
45 are working on a draft memorandum of agreement between
46 the Fish and Wildlife Service and our migratory bird
47 task force members. It's in a draft form right now.
48 We're getting close to finalizing that.
49
50 In regards to the additional
44
1 conservation measures, at least the people of the North
2 Slope feel like these are something that we don't
3 support because over the last two years there's been a
4 number of different outreach and education that has
5 happened. The local hunters have taken ownership and
6 are fully aware of the situation that happened in 2008
7 and we feel that it's been a successful effort that we
8 put together through the memorandum of agreement and
9 providing the radio talk shows.
10
11 With that, I just want to reiterate
12 that -- yeah, one of the things that our people have a
13 difficult time with is the shooting hours that are in
14 the regulations. I know through the AMBCC that this
15 body had approved for the North Slope Region to go back
16 to the 2008 regulations for the North Slope, so the
17 shooting hours is one of the issues that we have
18 because it's not a customary and traditional practice.
19 To my knowledge, no other regions have such regulations
20 for the subsistence harvest of birds.
21
22 Other than that, I did not communicate
23 with Fred or Doug on what was expected to be discussed
24 on this agenda item, so I'll leave it with that.
25
26 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thank you, Taqulik.
27 Any more comments from other Council members regarding
28 this?
29 Fred or Eric, any response?
30
31 MR. TAYLOR: No response, thank you.
32
33 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Anything from the
34 State rep?
35
36 MR. RABE: No comment.
37
38 CHAIRMAN NANENG: If there's no
39 comments from either the State or the Federal
40 representative, I think some of the AMBCC members like
41 them. So you'll keep us abreast on the issue of the
42 shooting hours because I've never heard that there are
43 ever shooting hours unless you're a sports hunter, I
44 guess. I think that's something that's coming down
45 that's new.
46
47 Up in the North Slope I know that
48 during the summertime the sun never sets. It always
49 seems to be the same time all day long or even all
50 night long, so shooting hours are practically new and I
45
1 have a concern about them. I just wanted to make that
2 comment.
3
4 MS. HEPA: Yeah, and at least in our
5 discussion with the hunters it is not a necessary
6 regulation. When you put regulations, we feel that
7 aren't going to help with the issue that it only
8 creates an opportunity for people to be breaking the
9 law and that's the way that the people view it. This
10 is supposed to help with the Stellar's Eider concern
11 that has been brought forth to us in the last two
12 years. Again, our people really have stepped up to the
13 plate, we've taken ownership. Stellar's Eiders are not
14 a targeted species. They need to recognize the efforts
15 that we put in and that this additional regulation is
16 not necessary.
17
18 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Okay. Thank you.
19 Eric.
20
21 MR. TAYLOR: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
22 The shooting hours were designed to provide the hunter
23 a great opportunity to identify target species. It's a
24 small window of time in terms of when they are
25 regulated before the fall hunt begins in September. I
26 do not believe, and I can have Gary correct me, but I
27 do not believe any citations were issued last year
28 relative to shooting hours because it was a new
29 regulation and I think the Service went to great
30 lengths in terms of both signage and contacting
31 individual hunters in terms of this regulation to try
32 to make sure that people were aware of why it was
33 designed and what it was designed for and to try to
34 gain collaboration in terms of following shooting
35 hours.
36
37 We do understand it's a new regulation
38 as such and we also understand that it is not a
39 customary and traditional practice. Like anything new,
40 I think it's going to take some time period to be
41 accepted. I think it's also safe to say that the Fish
42 and Wildlife Service is looking at this in terms of how
43 effective it is. Just because a regulation is passed
44 doesn't necessarily mean it's designed and will work
45 perfectly. So I think the Service will look at in
46 terms of how effective this regulation is and in terms
47 of providing protection for migratory birds. Thank
48 you.
49
50 MS. HEPA: My comment to that is,
46
1 again, like I said, when
2 you put it into the regulation booklet and the people
3 are not, you know, following that and because it's so
4 foreign to us what shooting hours are it puts our
5 people in a position to where they can get into some
6 serious trouble. I'm talking about citations that are
7 written for things like this. If people for some
8 reason are not able to pay the citation or understand
9 the system of going through the Federal courts,
10 warrants for their arrest will happen and that has
11 happened recently. I don't want to go there and we
12 have a big concern about that specific regulation.
13
14 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any comment?
15
16 MR. TAYLOR: No, thank you.
17
18 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thank you. So this
19 will be an ongoing issue that you will be working with
20 the Fish and Wildlife Service from the North Slope?
21
22 MS. HEPA: Yes.
23
24 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Okay. Any other
25 comments from anybody else. Sandy.
26
27 MS. TAHBONE: I've got some comments,
28 but I'll save them when we discuss the 2011
29 regulations.
30
31 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Okay. Thank you.
32 Any more discussion on the 2010 proposed North Slope
33 conservation measures?
34
35 (No comments)
36
37 CHAIRMAN NANENG: If there isn't, then
38 we'll go onto the next item, which is the extension of
39 spring/summer season into fall, letter of SRC Chair
40 Paul Schmidt in response. Eric.
41
42 MR. TAYLOR: Thank you, Mr. Chair. The
43 Alaska Migratory Bird Co-management Council drafted a
44 letter on January 22nd to
45 Mr. Paul Schmidt, who is the chair of the Service
46 Regulations Committee and the assistant director of
47 Migratory Birds for the Fish and Wildlife Service. The
48 letter requested the Service Regulations Committee as
49 well as the Flyway Councils consider adopting or
50 options for adoption of a subsistence season during the
47
1 fall and winter time period.
2
3 On April 1st the Service replied to the
4 Alaska Migratory Bird Co-management Council and the
5 response was that we have received the request by the
6 Alaska Migratory Bird Co-management Council to look at
7 what potential alternatives there would be to allow a
8 fall and winter subsistence season and Mr. Schmidt
9 writes that the request has been, as well as the
10 accompanying white paper has been sent to the
11 Solicitor's Office in the Department of Interior for
12 review and response.
13
14 That's as much as I know at this point.
15 The request is sitting in the Solicitor's Office in the
16 Department of Interior for review. That's as much of
17 an update as I can provide you.
18
19 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thank you, Eric. Any
20 questions regarding the letter? Enoch.
21
22 MR. SHIEDT: Why is it that every time
23 an issue comes up you guys always have to go through
24 the Solicitor's Office to do it and they're from out of
25 state and the problem is here. You're just pushing on
26 your work to someone else.
27
28 MR. TAYLOR: Thank you, Mr. Chair. The
29 reason this was
30 forwarded to the Solicitor's Office is that it is a
31 legal question in terms of the amendment to the
32 Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the regulations
33 associated with that. Because there's a documented
34 record in terms of what was changed in terms of the
35 Migratory Bird Treaty Act to allow spring and summer
36 subsistence, it was determined that the Solicitor's
37 Office was the choice in terms of making the best
38 recommendation and review.
39
40 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any comment on that?
41
42 MR. PEDERSON: Mr. Chairman, thank you.
43 In response to Enoch's questions, there was several of
44 us here at this table that were at the workshop that
45 developed the white paper. One of the other options,
46 although we didn't want to go that route, it was
47 suggested that we needed to hear what the Solicitor's
48 Office was doing.
49
50 Another option that we discussed at
48
1 that same meeting with the same white paper is that if
2 we did not get a favorable response from the
3 Solicitor's Office on this, that we might be able to
4 work through the State system and the Flyway Council
5 system to try and get those issues related in the white
6 paper addressed. So we discussed some options and that
7 other option was one other thing that we're hoping to
8 look at if we do get an unfavorable opinion.
9
10 I just wanted to make that point
11 because that was part of our discussions on the white
12 paper.
13
14 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thank you, Mike.
15 Dan, you got comments regarding this too?
16
17 MR. ROSENBERG: Yes, thank you. To
18 follow up on what Mike just presented, I'd just like to
19 inform everyone that there were several options in the
20 white paper in addition to this at least to pursue and
21 see what their feasibility was. One of those was to go
22 to work through the Pacific Flyway Council process in
23 terms of getting the fall harvest, the fall subsistence
24 hunt.
25
26 Patty Brown-Schwalenberg and I made a
27 presentation to the study committee of the Pacific
28 Flyway Council and we submitted what they call an
29 informational note into the official package to the
30 Pacific Flyway Council and that was at the meetings
31 that we just had at Klamath Falls in March.
32
33 This informational note, I apologize, I
34 don't have copies for everyone, but most of it was
35 background material from the white paper explaining why
36 we were doing this. In the end though, what we did was
37 we requested that the Pacific Flyway Council identify
38 and advise the AMBCC on mechanisms for utilizing the
39 flyway regulatory system to implement a fall and winter
40 subsistence season.
41
42 So we discussed this and we asked for
43 that information on how we can work through this
44 process, but we haven't gotten an official response
45 yet. Although Bob Trost -- is Bob here? I don't want
46 to put Bob on the spot, but Bob Trost was there and he
47 did have some insight into the whole thing. I don't
48 know if he wants to address that or not now. We
49 started that process.
50
49
1 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Dale.
2
3 MR. RABE: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I did
4 attend. Because I am the Alaska representative to the
5 Pacific Flyway Council, I did attend the meeting which
6 was held in Milwaukee in the latter part of March.
7 This was brought forward as an agenda item and was
8 basically provided as an informational brief. Again,
9 I'll defer my memory to Bob Trost if I get this wrong,
10 but there was no action taken at that point in time
11 other than the recognition that the first action by the
12 Service was to get a response from the solicitor. It
13 was openly acknowledged that the Flyway Council may be
14 asked to consider process questions in terms of how
15 AMBCC could interface with that, but there was no
16 detailed discussion in terms of how that might look
17 going forward.
18
19 MR. ROSENBERG: Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
20 I just want to add
21 the Department of Fish and Game are willing, through
22 the flyway process as it currently stands, to submit
23 proposals from AMBCC and that is open. The reaction to
24 those proposals I can't predict for you, but we are
25 willing to submit proposals and discuss that option.
26
27 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thanks, Dan. Any
28 comments, Bob, since they put you on the spot?
29
30 MR. TROST: Very briefly. I'll start
31 with the Council
32 meeting. Dale, I think, is correct in that the Council
33 tabled any formal action on the proposal at this point
34 in time pending the Service's solicitor review.
35 Although I understand that it's a frustration to have
36 all of these things referred to an office that doesn't
37 promptly turn many of these requests around, the fact
38 of the matter is that there are a number of legal
39 issues involved here as to what, based on the treaty
40 and the existing legislation, the Service has the free
41 board to do. It's felt that in order to find out what
42 those side boards are they need that solicitor's
43 opinion before they begin to work on this.
44
45 The approach of going through the
46 Flyway Council has some feasibility and could probably
47 provide some relief, but the issue that you'll run into
48 in that direction is that the Flyway Council also
49 operates with relatively rigid side boards. They have
50 a set number of days in which they're allowed to
50
1 authorize a hunting season. They have things like
2 shooting hours that apply all the time. They have bag
3 limits which are uncommon in subsistence seasons. A
4 number of the other regulations as far as transporting
5 harvested birds apply, so a season authorized under the
6 sporthunting regulations would have to conform to all
7 of those constraints, which currently, of course, are
8 not considered as part of this subsistence hunting. In
9 essence, to authorize one of these seasons under the
10 sporthunting regulations, you would also be agreeing or
11 establishing a whole host of regulations which don't
12 normally apply in a subsistence season.
13
14 For that reason, I think the Flyway
15 Council too perhaps believes that this is not your best
16 avenue, although it is an avenue that you could pursue
17 to some extent, but your solution probably lies
18 elsewhere in this process. They're going to defer and
19 wait for the official word from the Service solicitor
20 before it goes further.
21
22 With that, I'd answer any questions you
23 may have.
24
25 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Ida.
26
27 MS. HILDEBRAND: Just a point of
28 information. The white paper is under Tab 2 in our
29 Board materials.
30
31 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Enoch.
32
33 MR. SHIEDT: Am I understanding you
34 right? I'm
35 translating what you're saying. When they hunt birds
36 in the Lower 48, here in Alaska we have concerns about
37 bringing just a bird within the state just to another
38 town, yet in the Lower 48 they could cross the state
39 and they won't get cited or anything like that? I'm
40 just translating what you're saying as a Native. I'm
41 not a lawyer. That's just the way I understand you.
42 Why are they not cited and you guys worry about us
43 here.
44
45 MR. TROST: You've clearly
46 misunderstood me. Actually the regulations that govern
47 how harvested birds can be moved around in the Lower 48
48 are much more strict than you have here. For an
49 individual hunter to harvest birds and transport them,
50 they have to be labeled, there's a number of -- they
51
1 all have to be tagged and he can't have anything in his
2 possession greater than a daily possession limit,
3 another thing that does not apply here in Alaska to
4 subsistence harvest.
5
6 Generally the possession limits, as you
7 know from the sport season here, exist on all the other
8 hunters of migratory birds. In the Lower 48, the
9 possession limit is generally twice the daily bag
10 limit. Therefore it is illegal for any individual to
11 possess more birds than that and to have that many
12 birds in your possession they all have to be tagged
13 before you can move them. So there are a number of much
14 more stringent regulations that apply to sporthunting
15 regulations in general than you generally have here.
16 So if you were to attempt to authorize your fall
17 subsistence hunting under the existing sporthunting
18 regulations, you would also be buying into these much
19 more restrictive regulations.
20
21 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any more questions
22 for Bob? Sandy.
23
24 MS. TAHBONE: The questions I have, and
25 this is a request
26 from our Regional Council, is we have yet to hear any
27 -- we don't have any kind of communication yet to date
28 other than my sitting here on this Council from AMBCC
29 regarding our request and the
30 timeline that we can hope to have this issue addressed.
31
32 Within the actions of this Council, we
33 requested Staff write letters to the U.S. Fish and
34 Wildlife Service as well as the SRC to address this.
35 I'm concerned. I see the letter was written in January
36 of this year to the SRC, but I don't see a letter
37 written to our Alaska regional director because we did
38 know that the solicitor's opinion would have to be --
39 would hinge on that as part of the process.
40
41 So I'm really concerned regarding the
42 timing. I mean the white paper was completed. We did
43 adopt it in September. Yet it took how many months for
44 a letter to be written to the SRC and I have yet to see
45 a letter that was written to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
46 Service. Maybe Eric might be able to say whether or
47 not they have received a letter from the AMBCC
48 regarding this. I really would like to see what type
49 of time frame we're looking at regarding receiving a
50 solicitor's opinion. Someone needs to be held
52
1 accountable to this process we're trying to go through
2 to provide for this hunt.
3
4 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Eric.
5
6 MR. TAYLOR: Sandy, I was aware that
7 the meeting occurred in September relative between the
8 AMBCC, the Fish and Wildlife Service as well as
9 representatives from the Washington office in terms of
10 this issue and that at that time the request was made
11 for a letter to be drafted by the AMBCC as well as a
12 white paper.
13
14 I'm at a loss in terms of why the
15 letter was not written to the Service until January and
16 why the time transpired. When the letter was received,
17 it was sent to Paul Schmidt, who is the assistant
18 director for migratory birds and the chair of the
19 Service Regulations Committee. When that happens, that
20 corresponded automatically, goes back to the region of
21 concern, in this case it's the Alaska region, so a copy
22 of the letter went back to Geoff Haskett as the
23 regional director. In terms of the communication
24 within the Service, it occurred right away once the
25 letter was sent out.
26
27 The Service Regulations Committee, Bob,
28 correct me in terms of dates, I want to say February,
29 late February, is that correct?
30
31 MR. TROST: Actually it was the first
32 week in February.
33
34 MR. TAYLOR: First week in February. So
35 that letter was received by the Service Regulations
36 Committee on a formal basis and a briefing was
37 delivered to the Service Regulations Committee in
38 February. And then it took until April 1st for a
39 letter to come out of the Washington office from Paul
40 Schmidt's office saying that the request was received
41 and then forwarded to the Solicitor's Office.
42
43 I could understand I think your concern
44 relative to the time it took for the letter to be
45 drafted by the AMBCC executive director to the Service
46 and that's the best I can do.
47
48 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Sandy.
49
50 MS. TAHBONE: So in regards to -- at
53
1 what point do we hear
2 from the Solicitor's Office that they've received the
3 request and what type of timeframe are we going to be
4 looking at? I mean we need to have some type of a
5 timeframe so if we need to hound them or remind them of
6 this. What our Council is requesting is that timeframe
7 and who -- something that we can follow and hold
8 somebody accountable to.
9
10 MR. TAYLOR: My recommendation might be
11 and, again, I do not have the experience that others
12 might have in terms of dealing with the Solicitor's
13 Office, but I think it's probably safe to say these
14 things aren't turned around in warped speed fashion.
15 To that extent, the letter that the AMBCC received was
16 dated April 1st. I think a reasonable time period
17 would be a month for a follow-up communication. I'll
18 leave that to the Council. I think that would probably
19 be reasonable. I cannot -- in terms of your request
20 about when you will receive a response from the
21 Solicitor's Office, I can't give you a date.
22
23 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Sandra, on Friday
24 we're having a teleconference with the Solicitor's
25 Office and some of the attorneys that work with the
26 solicitor. Maybe we can make that as one of the
27 questions we can raise to them when we're having the
28 teleconference on Friday. I know that Eric is not the
29 boss of the solicitor, so when you deal with the
30 Federal government you hurry up and wait. So even if
31 we ask for a time table we'll never get those
32 responses. So I would request that we try and have an
33 open mind as the pace of the Federal government and we
34 know that we can forever -- they may not even want to
35 deal with this as far as we know. Since they're going
36 to be on the teleconference on Friday, maybe that
37 question can be asked of them.
38
39 MS. TAHBONE: Mr. Chairman. My request
40 is to our staff, the
41 AMBCC staff, you know, what they're -- now apparently
42 the SRC has requested the opinion of the solicitor. So
43 the expected timeframe for it to sit on that desk is
44 whether it's one month to six months or a year. And
45 then once that's received what's our next step? If the
46 next step is that, yes, we can use the SRC process,
47 then what will we do then? If, no, we can't use that,
48 what would our next -- and what can we expect? We've
49 got to have some kind of plan.
50
54
1 Like I said, the white paper was
2 already produced and adopted, so there was no work that
3 staff needed to do there. It was just a matter of
4 drafting a letter and making the request to who we had
5 requested that the letter and white paper be sent to.
6 I'm really concerned about the time it took for that to
7 happen, understanding that this is an important issue.
8 It was brought up numerous times the understanding that
9 we have regarding the time it takes for the solicitor
10 to provide us with an opinion. I'm really concerned
11 about the amount of time that it took staff to complete
12 this task.
13
14 CHAIRMAN NANENG: I understand the
15 concern and it's going to be an ongoing concern for a
16 while for many of our people in the villages, but I
17 think that we, like I stated, we have an opportunity to
18 ask a solicitor's representative on Friday when we have
19 a teleconference with them if they received the letter
20 and who is handling the request for SRC. I think we
21 can get an update on Friday and we're not going to be
22 able to provide it here today.
23
24 If you can participate on Friday on a
25 teleconference, that will give you an opportunity to
26 ask that question directly to the Solicitor's Office.
27 I think that would be a better avenue than trying to
28 get the response right now from Eric or any of the Fish
29 and Wildlife Service representatives that are sitting
30 here in this room.
31
32 MS. TAHBONE: Mr. Chairman, I don't
33 expect a response right
34 now and it's fine when we are in that teleconference
35 that we do say, hey, by the way, we understand that you
36 have a request regarding this issue.
37
38 The issue I have is with the
39 responsibilities of our staff regarding this issue and
40 keeping the Regional Councils aware and what kind of
41 timeframe are they expecting this issue to take place.
42 I mean it's their job, you know, it's their task, so I
43 don't expect that answer today, but I expect that
44 answer sometime in the future.
45
46 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Ida.
47
48 MS. HILDEBRAND: Thank you, Mr.
49 Chairman. Perhaps in the future the Council can
50 request time certain when they've requested something
55
1 of staff that they expect a turnaround or they expect a
2 draft letter to be issued by a time certain. Thank
3 you.
4
5 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Okay. Thank you,
6 Ida. Maybe that's a
7 good suggestion. I think that if we have adopted
8 something as the AMBCC, then we can request that the
9 staff deal with it within a certain time period rather
10 than waiting for about four months before they write
11 that letter on actions requested by the AMBCC.
12
13 But we can find out on Friday. We can
14 ask the solicitor. I know that you're concerned about
15 the time that it took, for the staff of AMBCC to have
16 taken all that time, to not notify them, and we
17 probably would have had at least a response by now if
18 that letter had been written earlier. So I concur with
19 your position on the time that it took for staff to
20 write it.
21
22 Any more on the -- Enoch.
23
24 MR. SHIEDT: Yeah, you keep bringing up
25 that teleconference. Who all you've got planning to
26 listen to that teleconference? I will cancel my trip
27 and go on a later flight to Kotzebue just to listen to
28 the teleconference because I'll be in flight. Is there
29 somewhere we can meet together with a teleconference
30 phone? That way we don't like what they're trying to
31 tell us we could put it on mute and talk amongst each
32 other right here locally as a group to meet.
33
34 CHAIRMAN NANENG: We have one of our
35 staff from AVCP that's going to be at that
36 teleconference who has made that arrangement and he's
37 requesting that we have at least a teleconference on
38 Thursday, which is tomorrow, to talk about a strategy
39 and what issues need to be brought up with the party
40 that's going to be participating from Washington, D.C.
41 That's one of the reasons why I'm heading back today,
42 to try and identify some of the issues that we have to
43 bring forward to the teleconference. We're trying to
44 set up a conference for tomorrow to be able to talk
45 about what we're going to be talking about with the
46 solicitor and Department of Interior representatives.
47
48 Anybody else. Taqulik.
49
50 MS. HEPA: Thank you. Maybe we could
56
1 bring it up in our Native caucus. If people are going
2 to be participating in Anchorage, if you want to gather
3 together we could pick a location during our Native
4 caucus.
5
6 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Okay. Any more
7 discussion on the extension of -- oh, Dale, you had
8 your hand raised. Was it related to this?
9
10 MR. RABE: Mr. Chair. It's been enough
11 time and with an old memory I can't remember what the
12 comment was.
13
14 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Sorry about that. If
15 no more discussion on the extension of spring, summer
16 and fall hunt and letter to Paul Schmidt, we'll go on
17 to the next agenda item. It's lunch time right now, so
18 if everybody wants to break for lunch until about 1:15,
19 get back here at 1:15.
20
21 (Off record)
22
23 (On record)
24
25 CHAIRMAN NANENG: We'll go ahead and
26 call this meeting back to order. The time now is 1:22
27 p.m. We're about seven minutes late.
28
29 We left on the agenda item C on old
30 business. We're down to item C. Fish and Wildlife
31 Service, duck stamp policy. Gary.
32
33 MR. YOUNG: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
34 Ladies and gentleman
35 on the Council. Thanks for the opportunity to be
36 before you today. Maybe not the best topic for right
37 after lunch, but nevertheless it's on the agenda.
38
39 It's already been discussed a little
40 bit, I think. I have heard and understand concerns
41 about the duck stamp policy. Myron, Chairman of the
42 Council, alluded to it a little bit that this is the
43 third year of our phase-in in enforcement. The first
44 year was a lot of strength put into education and
45 outreach of the need to have the duck stamp.
46
47 The second year, which was last year,
48 was continued outreach with much help from the North
49 Slope, we appreciate that, to educate hunters of the
50 need for the duck stamp and provide verbal warnings if
57
1 someone did not have one.
2
3 Which led us to this year, which is the
4 third year, and which by the policy or memo that was
5 issued as the year that we will start citing for not
6 having a duck stamp while you are waterfowl hunting.
7
8 Having said that, that is the policy.
9 That is the third year of the phase in. It by no means
10 means that you automatically get a violation notice or
11 a citation if you don't have a duck stamp. It is just
12 the policy that this year it is allowed or it has been
13 agreed that we would write if the circumstances led us
14 to the conclusion that that was the best action to take
15 and the circumstances led to that.
16
17 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any questions.
18
19 MR. NUPOWHOTUK: My name is Mark
20 Nupowhotuk and I'm privately -- we own our land and I
21 don't agree with U.S. Fish and Wildlife. I don't agree
22 with the duck stamp. I lived and hunted -- well, our
23 folks in Gambell and Savoonga. I know we own our own
24 private land. Now is there -- I've got a question for
25 you. Is there any law that says on private land that
26 we should own a duck stamp?
27
28 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Go ahead, Gary.
29
30 MR. YOUNG: In answer to the question,
31 the duck stamp regulation does not distinguish between
32 private or public lands. The Act simply states if you
33 hunt waterfowl, you have to have a duck stamp. The
34 law.
35
36 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thanks, Gary. Did
37 you have a comment, Taqulik.
38
39 MS. HEPA: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I
40 just wanted to clarify that the North Slope Borough did
41 not advocate or do outreach on the duck stamp issue
42 because we have our reservations about the issue. We
43 did let the general public know that we were working
44 toward changing the law with other regions in the state
45 through AVCP's leadership. But I believe the Fish and
46 Wildlife Service law enforcement did do some type of
47 outreach for that, but we weren't involved with it.
48
49 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Okay. Thank you.
50 Did you have a response, Gary?
58
1 MR. YOUNG: No, just thank you for
2 clarification.
3
4 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any other comments.
5 John.
6
7 MR. REFT: You say you don't need the
8 duck stamp or you do have to have the duck stamp,
9 excuse me, but if you're retired, 60, the State does
10 not require you to have the State stamp, but in Kodiak,
11 like I mentioned this morning, you have to have the
12 Federal. So does this pertain to not having it if
13 you're 60 or over or even if you are 60 now you're
14 going to have to have the stamp?
15
16 MR. YOUNG: The Federal stamp?
17
18 MR. REFT: Yes.
19
20 MR. YOUNG: Yes, that's correct. The
21 only requirement age-wise on having the duck stamp is
22 anyone 16 years of age or over is required to have it.
23 There is no upper limit where you would not be required
24 to.
25
26 MR. REFT: But it's not pertaining to
27 the State stamp, which is the $5 in comparison to the
28 $15 Federal.
29
30 MR. YOUNG: That's right.
31
32 MR. ROSENBERG: Yeah, if I understood
33 the question correctly. Just to be clear, you are
34 required to
35 have the State stamp. The requirements are less -- the
36 age requirements are under 16 or over 60 you're exempt.
37 Sixty or over you're exempt on the State stamp. With
38 the Federal stamp, at 60 and over you're not exempt.
39 So if you're 62 years old, you need the Federal stamp
40 but not the State stamp. If you're 59, you need both.
41
42 MR. REFT: Thank you, Dan, that
43 clarifies it.
44
45 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thank you, Dan. Any
46 more discussion. Joe
47
48 MR. HICKS: Thank you, Mr. Chair. What
49 is the Federal enforcement agency's interaction for?
50 How does the Federal enforcement agency interact with
59
1 the Alaska state troopers? In our area, the Federal
2 agencies, I guess, enforcement is limited. So,
3 therefore, they give their authority to the state
4 troopers to enforce. What is the interaction in that
5 the state trooper follows the same protocol or policy
6 as you would?
7
8 MR. YOUNG: Correct. Most of the
9 interaction with the troopers is conducted locally
10 between our agents and whoever the wildlife trooper may
11 or the trooper may be in that area. We have a
12 memorandum of agreement with the troopers where they by
13 State authority give us power to enforce State wildlife
14 laws and in turn we give them a deputy commission to
15 enforce Federal wildlife laws. So they are informed of
16 our interpretation of the Federal law and how we
17 enforce them through contact either with their managers
18 here in Anchorage, with Stan and myself, or locally
19 with the agents in the field.
20
21 MR. HICKS: I know this is probably not
22 in your ballpark, but where or how does Federal law
23 extend to Native allotments? In other words, let's say
24 State jurisdiction in regards to enforcement of the
25 Migratory Bird Treaty Act on Native allotments, would
26 you know that?
27
28 MR. YOUNG: I don't know for sure if I
29 understand the question. Are you asking if a trooper
30 can enforce our laws on a Native allotment?
31
32 MR. HICKS: Yes.
33
34 MR. YOUNG: If they have the Federal
35 deputy game warden commission, yes, they would.
36
37 MR. HICKS: I guess where I'm talking
38 about is jurisdiction.
39 Do they have the jurisdiction to enforce Federal laws
40 on Native allotments?
41
42 MR. YOUNG: If they hold the Deputy
43 Federal game warden commission, which we issue in
44 connection with that memorandum of agreement, yes, that
45 would apply to Federal wildlife, specific wildlife
46 laws, yes.
47
48 MR. HICKS: Thank you.
49
50 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Molly and then
60
1 Taqulik.
2
3 MS. CHYTHLOOK: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
4 If the State requires -- or doesn't require at age 60
5 plus, could this Board or somebody be able to write a
6 proposal to meet the same requirement as the State does
7 and that's to not require duck stamps at age 60-plus or
8 what's the process?
9
10 MR. YOUNG: I don't think there's
11 anything that would prevent a proposal to that, but the
12 process itself would take congressional action since it
13 is an act, referred to as the Duck Stamp Act, which is
14 passed by Congress. So to amend that would take an act
15 of Congress.
16
17 MS. DEWHURST: That's what I was going
18 to say.
19
20 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Donna, did you have
21 anything to add?
22
23 MS. DEWHURST: No, that was basically
24 what I was going to say.
25
26 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Taqulik.
27
28 MS. HEPA: This is a question for the
29 law enforcement officer here as well as the State, but
30 how much is it -- if you're given a citation, how much
31 is the citation for not having a Federal duck stamp and
32 then how much is it for not having a State duck stamp
33 and a State hunting license?
34
35 MR. YOUNG: Let me clarify first of all
36 that all fines for Federal violation notices that we
37 issue are set by what's referred to as the forfeiture
38 of collateral schedule set by the district courts. I
39 know the specific fine for no Federal duck stamp is
40 $100. I don't know the specific amounts for the State
41 hunting license or the State stamp.
42
43 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any other questions?
44
45 MS. HEPA: And then my final question
46 was U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service law enforcement.
47 How many enforcement officers are in Alaska statewide?
48
49 MR. YOUNG: I can tell you that there
50 are right now four agents based in Anchorage, including
61
1 myself and Stan Pruszenski, who are in the regional
2 office and who very seldom get to the field. There are
3 two field agents currently in Anchorage, one in Juneau,
4 one in Nome and four in Fairbanks. Now that is special
5 agents I'm referring to within the office of law
6 enforcement. The Fish and Wildlife Service also has a
7 Refuges Division, which has Refuge officers and I don't
8 know the total number. Is Paul Liedberg still here?
9
10 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: No, he left.
11
12 MS. DEWHURST: (Away from microphone)
13 and then each park has two to four officers. BLM unit
14 is going to have a couple officers.
15
16 MR. YOUNG: Well, outside of the Fish
17 and Wildlife Service -- Fish and Wildlife only has
18 officers in the Division -- Office of Law Enforcement,
19 which are agents, and then Refuges, and I do not know
20 the total number of Refuge officers. Donna may be able
21 to elaborate.
22
23 MS. DEWHURST: I'm trying to remember
24 how many Refuges. I think eight or nine and then each
25 Refuge usually has at least two officers and then
26 outside of that other Federal officers. If you're on
27 National Park land, of course Park rangers and then
28 each Park has two to four or more. Then BLM units have
29 their own BLM officers, so there's other Federal
30 officers involved. Forest Service has their Forest
31 Service rangers. So there's other Federal officers.
32 Whenever we do anything -- because Migratory Bird
33 Treaty Act rests with the Fish and Wildlife Service, we
34 do try to coordinate with the other officers, the other
35 agencies that might have enforcement people out there.
36
37 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Enoch.
38
39 MR. SHIEDT: Yeah, I got a question.
40 You said the fine will be $100, but I got a problem
41 with it from my people in my villages that don't have
42 the $100. If they don't pay their fine, what's going
43 to happen to them? And, yes, there's two officers per
44 agency in my region. Since I have four, I have eight
45 and with the State trooper I have nine. They've been
46 meeting together and trying to say they're going to
47 start enforcing the duck stamp issue. I'm going to go
48 back and I'm going to try to talk to them and try to
49 talk them out of it. Right now it's a real big issue.
50 They don't harvest birds no more than they need.
62
1 MR. YOUNG: Yes, I understand and from
2 the questions I heard the $100 fine is what is assessed
3 for the violation notice. That is where our authority
4 stops. It would be up to a judge or the court to
5 decide if a person did not have to pay or did not have
6 the funds to pay for that, how the court would handle
7 that situation.
8
9 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Ida.
10
11 MS. HILDEBRAND: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
12 Do you plan to
13 increase your law enforcement over the summer months or
14 spring months when the hunting begins?
15
16 MR. YOUNG: Are you asking increase
17 specific to duck stamp enforcement?
18
19 MS. HILDEBRAND: Increase that would
20 put any human body out there that would cite any Native
21 person for duck stamps or for whatever they're doing
22 out there in subsistence hunting, fishing.
23
24 MR. YOUNG: We have no planned increase
25 other than our
26 normal activities for spring and summer.
27
28 MS. HILDEBRAND: Okay. So then do you
29 normally increase your law enforcement presence in the
30 spring and summer?
31
32 MR. YOUNG: I'm not trying to dodge
33 your question. I'm trying to understand. We have the
34 officers that I've referred to and we're going to
35 conduct the activities that we normally do in the
36 spring and summer with regards to all of the species we
37 have the charge to enforce the laws with, whether it's
38 marine mammals or migratory birds or fish for that
39 matter.
40
41 MS. HILDEBRAND: Is that an increase?
42
43 MR. YOUNG: We are not increasing the
44 number of officers.
45
46 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any more, Ida?
47 Enoch.
48
49 MR. SHIEDT: Yeah. I know this is a
50 migratory bird issue, the duck stamp issue, but the
63
1 Federal Advisory Board in my
2 region, we accepted and complied a take of caribou to
3 comply with the State, we won't have this issue. I'm
4 just saying, you know, the Federal did change how many
5 we could take a day. I think it could be worked out
6 where we could say if you're age over 60, 62 or
7 whatever, we could eliminate the duck stamp.
8
9 CHAIRMAN NANENG: John.
10
11 MR. REFT: Yeah, Mr. Chair. I really
12 have a hard time living with these new regs and stuff.
13 When we were a territory, we didn't have any problem.
14 Like everybody is saying here from rural villages, you
15 hunt to eat to survive. That's what we did. Then we
16 become a state and all you guys got these jobs here now
17 and all these regulations come in and these people in
18 the outlying villages don't have jobs. They want to
19 eat, support their families. That's all we want to do
20 here just to survive.
21
22 If you keep putting more regs on us,
23 then you make outlaws out of us and all I can see is
24 you're going to do away with us eventually. It's not
25 good. Even the people in the town of Kodiak, even if
26 they have stores and stuff to get their food from,
27 which the villages don't, they still require their
28 cultural way of life, which is the fish and game.
29 That's part of their life. They'll never lose that
30 till they die.
31
32 But here, it's frustrating because the
33 way I'm looking at it now, Mr. Young, is eventually
34 you're going to make outlaws out of all of us and we
35 don't want to be that. We want to work with you guys,
36 but we want to work in a way that we can eat and still
37 live like we always have. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
38
39 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any more comments to
40 Gary regarding the
41 duck stamp. Sandra.
42
43 MS. TAHBONE: Yeah, you know, we
44 requested outreach and you mentioned that outreach was
45 provided. Can you maybe describe some of those
46 outreach activities that you were engaged in.
47
48 MR. YOUNG: Main ones I was referring
49 to is our efforts on the North Slope with either
50 attending the recent Migratory Bird Fair, we had a
64
1 couple agents up there, just trying to make ourselves
2 available to the residents of the areas. We did a lot
3 last year when we would contact the hunters, providing
4 them either some of the cups or T-shirts or materials
5 we had printed with outreach messages on them and
6 similar activities like that.
7
8 MS. TAHBONE: Mr. Chairman. You know,
9 we've requested, and I'll read it from our record, an
10 all-inclusive outreach message regarding law
11 enforcement will be done for the spring 2010 season.
12 We had the understanding that this would be the year
13 that the duck stamp would be enforced and citations
14 would be given and I have yet to see that. As you can
15 hear, just the amount of time that we spent on this,
16 you know, requesting clarification and we still haven't
17 received any of that information. Our communities are
18 still pretty much not clear as to what's required.
19 It's a shame that we're still where we were three years
20 ago.
21
22 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any comments, Gary?
23
24 MR. YOUNG: Other than we'll try to do
25 better. I don't have any other comments than that.
26
27 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thank you. I just
28 want to make a couple
29 of comments. When the State of Alaska's position is
30 not in line with the Federal position and I hear that
31 the State troopers or State law enforcement, Fish and
32 Wildlife protection officers are deputized as Federal
33 agents, if the State and the Feds are not in agreement
34 with actions that are taken by the Federal government.
35
36 We just saw recently in the news
37 regarding the Charlie Reserve up in the Interior where
38 they closed off hunting and the State of Alaska is
39 objecting to it. What position does that give the
40 State troopers? Are they still deputized as Federal
41 agents so they have to enforce what the Feds are saying
42 or have required them to close off hunting in that
43 area?
44
45 This is a question that keeps nagging
46 me. If you're deputized as State trooper or State law
47 enforcement person as a Federal agent to enforce some
48 of these laws and they're not in agreement, it raises a
49 question. So do I say to a State trooper or State law
50 enforcement officer that because you are not in
65
1 compliance or recognizing the State or the Federal
2 requirements that I don't consider you to be a legal
3 representative of any law enforcement agency and to
4 enforce the duck stamp if they don't -- if they're not
5 in agreement with some of the Federal requirements.
6
7 The other thing too is that Alaska
8 Migratory Bird Co-management Council never had a say
9 regarding the requirement to have a duck stamp and I
10 thought that this was a co-management body. Under the
11 co-management body, I think it has to be consensus of
12 all the groups to sit down together and approve an
13 action such as this, but as far as I know there's never
14 been any consensus by the Alaska Migratory Bird
15 Co-management Council that duck stamps will be
16 required.
17
18 So it raises a lot of questions of why
19 Fish and Wildlife should be enforcing a duck stamp that
20 is from the solicitor's opinion, who probably never has
21 lived out in the villages at all and doesn't see the
22 economic impact it's going to have on our people. I'm
23 just questioning that. I know it's beyond your guys's
24 control because you say the powers that be sitting in
25 Washington, D.C., but I also feel that the regional
26 director has the discretion, like he did in 1984, to
27 say, no, duck stamps are not required.
28
29 I raise those questions and kind of
30 question at this time why Fish and Wildlife Service
31 would require a duck stamp and also deputize State law
32 enforcement people when State of Alaska may not
33 necessarily agree with everything that the Feds
34 authorizing them to do. Is it just nitpick here and
35 they're only required to do this and then ignore the
36 others? It just does not seem to be any standard or an
37 even keel of agreement. So if the State of Alaska
38 disagrees, then they're not going to be complying with
39 the Federal requirements. Are they only agreeing to
40 this because it's the Native people that finally got a
41 legalized hunt and then they're using it as a way of
42 saying, okay, the State of Alaska is going to enforce
43 it and because they don't get as much money out of it
44 other than probably wanting to be in control of what's
45 going on with the State.
46
47 I just raise that question as something
48 that I've been thinking about regarding the
49 requirements to have duck stamps. I thought at the very
50 beginning of putting this organization together
66
1 everything will be done by consensus. As far as I
2 know, there's no consensus on this issue. So I just
3 point that out as something that I've been concerned
4 about ever since we organized this Alaska Migratory
5 Bird Co-management Council and I think the buzz word
6 here is the co-management of the resources, yet it
7 seems like we're being managed to the point where we
8 are going to be -- we're going to end up becoming more
9 criminals as we thought we were back before we got the
10 Migratory Bird Treaty Protocol Amendment passed through
11 and negotiated with the other nations and then the
12 senate ratification of it. I just want to share my
13 thoughts with everyone.
14
15 So if there's no more discussion on the
16 law enforcement, I'd like to thank Gary. I know we're
17 working on this issue. I think we'll work on it as
18 long as we can. If Fish and Wildlife Service law
19 enforcement, as I told you before, want to come and
20 cite me, I'll be the prime example. I'm not going to
21 buy a duck stamp because I'm not a sporthunter. The
22 Alaska Migratory Bird Co-management Council was
23 established under the Migratory Bird Treaty Protocol
24 Amendment to legalize subsistence spring and summer
25 hunts. Subsistence, not sports.
26
27 With that, I'd like to thank you for
28 your presentation.
29
30 MR. YOUNG: Mr. Chairman, thank you and
31 I wish you success
32 on your call Friday.
33
34 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thank you. If we're
35 done with the Federal duck stamp policy, then we'll go
36 on to new business. Migratory bird population and
37 trends. Eric.
38
39 MS. TAHBONE: Mr. Chairman. Can I have
40 a little flexibility with my representatives that are
41 with me here from Gambell and Savoonga to ask questions
42 if they come up regarding his information?
43
44 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Yes.
45
46 MS. TAHBONE: Thank you.
47
48 MR. TAYLOR: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
49 My name is Eric Taylor. I'm with Fish and Wildlife
50 Service with the Division of Migratory Bird Management.
67
1 I appreciate the opportunity to address the Council.
2
3 What I'd like to do is talk about
4 abundance and trends of select species of geese, sea
5 ducks and loons in Alaska. I want to start out with
6 it's pretty easy to forget how special Alaska is in the
7 sense that greater than 40 percent of our state is
8 classified as wetlands or waters of the United States.
9 Waters of the United States being streams and rivers,
10 navigable waters.
11
12 In fact, Alaska wetlands comprised
13 greater than 60 percent of the United States total
14 wetlands. When you think about states like Ohio or
15 Illinois, my state of Missouri, California, those
16 states have lost up to 80 percent of their wetland
17 habitat.
18
19 The reason it's so important to have
20 high-quality wetland habitats is exemplified by what I
21 call the sampler of the waterfowl resource. We have
22 greater than 1,300,000 individuals of five species of
23 geese that come to Alaska every year. The lower left
24 we have up to 50 percent of the North American Pintail
25 population.
26
27 Myron, being from the Yukon Delta
28 Region, is blessed with greater than 1 million ducks
29 and greater than 500,000 geese on an annual basis. In
30 terms of United States breeding populations, we have
31 100 percent of King Eiders, Stellar's Eiders,
32 Spectacled Eider, Long-tailed Ducks, White-winged
33 Scoters, Black Scoters and Surf Scoters. We have 100
34 percent of the breeding populations in the United
35 States here in Alaska.
36
37 Given that, this is what I want to talk
38 about today. Quickly, I just want to go through what
39 it is that I do with Fish and Wildlife Service in terms
40 of the Waterfowl Management Branch. I thought the group
41 might be interested in a brief discussion on how we
42 estimate migratory bird populations and then I'll give
43 a status report on select species of migratory birds
44 and the species that I thought would be of most
45 interest to the group. Obviously I'm not going to hit
46 all of them.
47
48 So I work in the Division of Migratory
49 Bird Management, specifically in the waterfowl
50 management branch, and our responsibilities primarily
68
1 are to monitor status of waterfowl and other large
2 water birds in Alaska. We also conduct research to
3 address things like climate change, how it could be
4 affecting the distribution, abundance or productivity
5 of birds.
6
7 We also collaborate with U.S.G.S. on
8 potential disease concerns. We also assess the
9 potential effects of proposed actions. Things like the
10 proposed Izembek Road, proposed oil and gas leasing
11 near Teshekpuk Lake in terms of the large area used by
12 molting Brant, the Chulitna coal project that is
13 proposed. Proposed oil and gas projects or coal
14 projects or transportation corridors we will look at in
15 terms of potential effects to migratory birds.
16
17 We also assist with the development of
18 harvest regulations, be they sport or fall harvest
19 regulations as well as subsistence regulations. So
20 that's kind of our primary four missions in terms of
21 the waterfowl management branch.
22
23 The first one being monitoring
24 waterfowl populations. No doubt those of you who live
25 in outlying areas have probably seen one of more of
26 these planes. So we do this primarily by low altitude
27 aerial surveys conducted during the summer primarily
28 during the breeding populations for migratory birds.
29 So we have three Cessna 206's there on the lower
30 portion of the slide and then we have one specialized
31 aircraft, a turbine Beaver up in the upper left.
32
33 So how do we go about doing that. How
34 does one count birds from the plane. We have two
35 observers, left and right-hand seats, in the Cessna
36 206. They both are looking out their windows about 660
37 feet, so about 200 yards or so, out of both sides of
38 the aircraft. They can tell that distance by special
39 markers in the struts of the aircraft. We fly at about
40 100 to 150 feet altitude and we're doing about 100
41 miles an hour.
42
43 So these are specialized, well-trained
44 pilot biologists that are trained to conduct the
45 surveys.
46
47 MR. DEVINE: I've done aerial surveys
48 for sea otters in the region and the sea lions. A
49 hundred feet, that's like -- what was it, 300 feet when
50 we're doing sea otter surveys, you know, I mean you're
69
1 almost getting whiplash, what was that, you know. When
2 we do the sea lion surveys, we're at 600 feet and it's
3 like things are going by a lot slower. I mean you have
4 more room to see what's going on. At 100 feet, I mean
5 no wonder why you can't find any birds.
6
7 MR. TAYLOR: Well, actually, our pilot
8 biologists are probably some of the best trained in
9 North America. I think we do an exceptional job in
10 counting birds. Before people are released in terms of
11 on their own counting birds they go through a training
12 program, they work with another pilot biologist, they
13 take exams, they take training, so I would agree with
14 you wholeheartedly that it's not something that you
15 would just jump in the aircraft and try to identify
16 Keel from Mallards or Pintails from Gadwall without
17 significant training. But I think we do do an
18 excellent job in counting birds.
19
20 We use a program developed by a pilot
21 biologist out of Juneau, Jack Hodges that's an
22 automated program where we speak into a microphone as
23 we're flying over the wetlands and we record the
24 species, the numbers of birds, whether they're in pairs
25 or not, and then we actually punch in the location
26 automatically, so it's called a moving map. That's
27 recorded automatically, so we can record the species,
28 the numbers of birds in this transect and ultimately
29 come up with indexes for the population.
30
31 MR. SHIEDT: Yeah, I've got a question
32 on your flyway. What pattern of grids do you have? I
33 have a problem with your counting birds like this
34 because once you go by, you know, 300 feet the birds,
35 five, six hundred feet, are going to fly away and
36 you're not going to count them. What grid pattern are
37 you using?
38
39 MR. TAYLOR: The grid pattern is
40 dependant upon the survey in a particular area, but you
41 raise a very good point. When you design a survey, you
42 have to design -- keeping in mind the numbers of birds
43 that could move into the area as well as the numbers of
44 birds that could move out of the area as well as the
45 numbers of birds that could move within the area that
46 you actually surveyed so that you don't double count
47 them.
48
49 But we take all that into consideration
50 as well as what's called a detection factor. As you're
70
1 flying over, as Peter mentioned, you're not going to
2 see all the birds certainly. So we have what's called
3 a visibility detection factor where we can know by
4 flying repeated surveys or having people on the ground
5 we can actually estimate the numbers of birds that we
6 miss as well. So we do take all that into
7 consideration.
8
9 The first species I want to talk about
10 are Pacific Black Brant. About 90 percent nest on the
11 Y-K Delta with another smaller percentage up on the
12 arctic coastal plain as well as in western arctic
13 Alaska. The populations right now is around 145,000
14 based on the last two estimates.
15
16 The other subspecies of Brant called
17 Western High Arctic Brant nest primarily on Melville
18 Island. Both of those subspecies migrate along the
19 coast and the entire populations of both of those then
20 stay at Izembek Lagoon during the fall, about 98
21 percent will stay at Izembek Lagoon, gaining fat
22 reserves before they migrate south along the Pacific
23 coast.
24
25 Pacific Brant winter primarily in Baja
26 and mainland Mexico where Western High Arctic birds
27 winter primarily in specific areas in Washington.
28
29 So the population objective for Brant
30 for the Management Plan and the Goose Management Plan
31 is 150,000. The current population based on the last
32 two years is around 145. Over the last 10 years though
33 it's much less if you look at the 10-year average. So
34 we've had two excellent counts in the last two years.
35
36 In terms of the annual population
37 growth, if you look at the last 30 years, it's
38 basically stable at 0.0 percent. So they basically
39 have not -- stable during that time period. Over the
40 last 10 years, the population has shown about a 3
41 percent increase per year. So if you add 100 birds,
42 then next year you would have 103 birds. So about a 3
43 percent increase during that time period on an annual
44 basis.
45
46 In terms of current studies, the
47 scientist in the waterfowl branch that I work in, we're
48 looking at two different surveys to try to determine
49 what's the best way to estimate Brant. The mid-winter
50 Pacific Flyway survey, which is conducted in Mexico as
71
1 well as the Pacific Flyway wintering states,
2 California, Oregon and Washington as well as British
3 Columbia, versus the fall Izembek survey, where we also
4 survey Brant in the Izembek area when they occur there.
5 So we're trying to determine what's the best estimate,
6 what survey provides us the best estimate of Brant.
7
8 We're also seeing, as Myron knows, a
9 decline in the Tutakoke and Kokechik Bay Brant colonies
10 on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, significant declines in
11 both of those colonies over the last decade or so.
12 We're trying to determine what are the causal factors
13 associated with those declines.
14
15 Finally, a recent analysis that our
16 statistician has been working on is we're seeing Brant
17 move off of historic colonies on the Y-K Delta,
18 colonies like Tutakoke and Kokechik, and they're moving
19 to more dispersed areas. Something that we've not seen
20 before in the past. One time probably up to 70 to 80
21 percent of the Brant on the Y-K Delta nested in five
22 primary colonies, but now we're seeing them --
23 apparently, at least our preliminary analysis show,
24 they're more spread out.
25
26 The other thing that has been recently
27 published in the scientific literature is that we're
28 seeing a shift in the winter distribution. Back in the
29 '60s and '70s we only had maybe five to six thousand
30 Brant overwinter at Izembek. Now we're seeing upwards
31 to 30,000 Brant are staying the winter in Izembek
32 Refuge. So we have concerns in terms of the amount of
33 eel grass that they're dependant upon, whether that eel
34 grass is going to be sufficient and the reasons behind
35 the Brants staying and not migrating down to Mexico
36 like they traditionally have done.
37
38 Finally, we're still concerned with egg
39 harvest on the Y-K Delta even though it's closed.
40 According to the harvest estimates that Liliana has
41 provided, we're seeing up to 1,700 eggs still being
42 harvested on the delta. So it's something that we've
43 got some concerns relative to trying to get this
44 population up to its objective.
45
46 So what I've done here, and it's a
47 little bit difficult to see with the colors I've
48 selected, this is the population of Brant on the left,
49 on the Y axis or the left axis. This is years on the
50 bottom. This is the population objective that was
72
1 decided upon by the Pacific Flyway and the Goose
2 Management Plan, so it's 150,000. These are the levels
3 that have been set in both of those plans in terms of
4 when hunting would be closed, when it's very
5 restricted, restricted or moderate. So right now our
6 populations are right at 145,000 or so based on the
7 last two years and you can see that we've had an
8 increase since about 2001. If it goes in its current
9 trend, we'll hit that population objective of 150,000.
10
11 The next species I want to just touch
12 upon is Pacific Greater White-fronted Geese. These are
13 birds that nest to the west of this white line here.
14 The mid-continent White-fronts nest all the way from
15 the Interior Alaska up in Arctic Alaska and then all
16 the way through this Arctic Region here.
17
18 The Mid-continent White-fronts are
19 called that because they migrate down through the mid-
20 continent. They migrate and winter in Texas, Louisiana
21 and Mexico. The Pacific Greater White-front that nest
22 here in Western Alaska migrate and winter almost
23 exclusively in the central valley of California.
24
25 Here is a case that we probably wish
26 all of our species were in except for those possibly
27 causing problems on wintering grounds. We have a
28 population objective of 300,000 and yet our current
29 population is nearly double that, so our current
30 population is 589,000 based on the last three years.
31 If you look at the average population growth rate, you
32 can see that it's been doing quite well for the past 30
33 years.
34
35 In 1984, when the Goose Management Plan
36 or the Hooper Bay Agreement was signed, between that
37 time period and 1997, so a period of 15 years, it
38 showed an 8.8 percent increase. So population went
39 from 100,000 to over 300,000 during the time period.
40 In the recent past 20 years, they're still increasing
41 at a rate of about 4.6 percent per year. So, again, if
42 you had 1,000 birds, that's roughly another 200 birds a
43 year.
44
45 So we have a harvest strategy. It's
46 based at 15 percent of the three-year average. So one
47 might say with a population growth that what we're
48 having that harvest strategy may be conservative if,
49 indeed, we want to try to get this population at its
50 population objective.
73
1 Again, this will show you the decline
2 here that occurred from 1970 here down through around
3 '84 when the Hooper Bay Agreement was signed and then a
4 steady increase until our present estimate of 589,000.
5 Again, this is the population objective at 300,000
6 birds.
7
8 In terms of Emperor Geese.....
9
10 MS. TAHBONE: Before you move on.....
11
12 MR. TAYLOR: Yes.
13
14 MS. TAHBONE: With that one you didn't
15 show where they're breeding in. I don't know if I
16 missed it on your first slide.
17
18 MR. TAYLOR: The area here in green is
19 the breeding area here. So primarily the birds --
20 there's significant numbers of birds in the Y-K Delta
21 and then northward along the coast here as well as
22 inland areas.
23
24 MS. TAHBONE: Do they share the same
25 area with the Brant as far as breeding?
26
27 MR. TAYLOR: Not really. Brant tend to
28 be in low coastal areas, low relief, very wet areas.
29 Greater White-fronts more indicative of drier, more
30 drier tundra areas.
31
32 In terms of Emperors, Emperor Geese
33 nest primarily on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. There's
34 additional birds that nest on the Seward Peninsula and
35 some birds that nest over on the Chukotka Peninsula of
36 Russia.
37
38 In terms of molting or staging areas,
39 significant numbers of birds stage along the northern
40 part of the Alaska Peninsula and in terms of wintering
41 areas, small numbers of birds around Kodiak and then
42 out along the Aleutian Chain.
43
44 For Emperors, the population objective
45 is 150,000. The most recent three-year average is
46 78,144 birds. We're seeing an increase both in the
47 last 10 years, between 2000 and 2009, about a 2 percent
48 increase per year. Then over that longer time period
49 of about 30 years a 1.3 percent increase.
50
74
1 Sandy has asked me questions in terms
2 of the potential to open harvest or consider opening
3 harvest and, indeed, the Pacific Flyway Management Plan
4 for Emperors states that the resumption of harvest may
5 be considered when the population reaches a current
6 three-year index of 180,000. You can see that we're at
7 78,000 now.
8
9 So the season was closed -- just in
10 review, the season was closed for a fall sport hunt in
11 1986. The subsistence season was closed the year after
12 that. Despite it being closed for a long time period,
13 we're still having birds harvested primarily in two
14 regions. The Y-K Delta Region in 2007, there was an
15 estimated 1,500 birds were harvested. In the Bering
16 Strait/Norton Sound in 2007, an estimated 1,250 birds
17 were harvested.
18
19 It's clear that even though we're
20 having an increasing trend here, you would see a faster
21 increasing trend if this wasn't occurring here. The
22 biggest problem is these are birds that are occurring
23 -- a large portion of them are adult breeding birds
24 that are coming back during the spring and summer, so
25 you're removing the most valuable segment that could
26 get this population closer to its objective. Obviously
27 if we could decrease subsistence harvest, we increase
28 population growth and get to that population size that
29 we want faster.
30
31 MS. TAHBONE: So what are you basing
32 that on when you say -- I'm not aware of us asking any
33 questions on what birds are harvested. You're saying
34 that segment of the population. What are you basing
35 that on?
36
37 MR. TAYLOR: When you have birds come
38 back to the breeding
39 grounds, you've got a proportion that are adult
40 breeders versus the portion that are sub-adult birds.
41 So, for geese, it's two years before birds start
42 breeding. So the majority of those birds that are
43 coming back are adult breeding birds.
44
45 Any other questions?
46
47 MR. SHIEDT: Yeah, I got one. You said
48 about 80,000. How long have they been 80,000? I have
49 a feeling, you know, when these numbers are set there
50 was no Natives involved, the population level, that
75
1 they did 20 years ago.
2
3 MR. TAYLOR: Uh-huh.
4
5 MR. SHIEDT: What I'm saying is this.
6 Maybe that's what the level of the country could handle
7 and no more. That's why the population of the birds
8 stay at a certain level without really increasing
9 because they won't overharvest their area. That way
10 they won't decline or have a crash because you guys are
11 not looking at that population level of all species we
12 take in subsistence. Seal, caribou, birds, sheep,
13 whatever. They will not increase too high because they
14 won't have feed for the future and I think that's what
15 the birds are doing and you're not looking at that.
16
17 MR. TAYLOR: Well, to answer your
18 question in terms of what
19 the population has been doing, let me go back here.
20 For the past 10 years the birds have been increasing at
21 about 2 percent per year and then in the past 30 years
22 they've been increasing at 1 percent per year. So it's
23 been a long time they've been increasing.
24
25 If you want to look at that, here's the
26 graph in terms of -- again, this is the population on
27 the left-hand side and the years on the X-axis. You
28 can see that since about the early 2000s, which is what
29 this is showing here, they're showing that pretty sub-
30 stand of 2 percent increase per year. I don't think
31 the birds have reached carrying capacity. I don't
32 think we're at a point where habitat is limiting. I
33 think there's still -- both in wintering habitat and
34 breeding habitat, there's still habitat that's
35 available for Emperors to use. This certainly isn't
36 their end point.
37
38 If I had to guess, you know, their
39 carrying capacity is -- you know, at one point we had
40 100 -- based on some estimates back from the '60s, we
41 had an estimate of 140,000 birds. Now has that habitat
42 changed in the past 50 years? Possibly. I mean you
43 might absolutely be right. The carrying capacity may
44 not be at that point there. If I was a betting person,
45 I would definitely say they have not reached their
46 carrying capacity there. So I think there is a
47 potential for them to continue to increase.
48
49 MR. SHIEDT: Okay. I have another one.
50 You say they're
76
1 being harvested in two places here. Are they
2 harvesting in the wintering grounds too?
3
4 MR. TAYLOR: There is -- I didn't write
5 it down. I'm sure there's some birds being harvested
6 on the Aleutian Islands.
7
8 MR. SHIEDT: Then why target the Native
9 that they're harvesting the birds, not target the
10 sporthunters?
11
12 MR. TAYLOR: I doubt -- sport season is
13 closed, so, to our knowledge, there's not any birds
14 that are being harvested by sporthunters during the
15 fall. They're probably being harvested by subsistence
16 hunters during the fall and winter in those areas. But
17 the greatest -- in terms of the harvest, the greatest
18 harvest is occurring on the breeding grounds on the Y-K
19 Delta and the Bering Strait Region.
20
21 Again, this is information you can find
22 in Liliana's report. If you'd like a breakdown, I'm
23 sure Liliana could actually do a breakdown in terms of
24 where birds are being harvested as well as when they're
25 being harvested, whether it's spring, summer or fall,
26 so that you could actually get an idea of exactly where
27 they're being harvested.
28
29 MS. TAHBONE: So I got a question. Are
30 you also looking at -- since we're possibly looking at
31 a re-opening, are you looking at the current level of
32 harvest even in a closed season to the possible -- what
33 it can sustain as far as opening?
34
35 MR. TAYLOR: If a proposal came forward
36 in terms of opening up, we would have to try and take a
37 guess at what that increased harvest might do to the
38 population.
39
40 In terms of Canadas and Cacklers, this
41 shows for all Canada Geese, but specifically I wanted
42 to zone in on Cacklers because you're going to hear
43 some concern relative to the situation that Enoch was
44 referring to, and that is where habitat is limiting.
45 In this case, the habitat is limiting for Cacklers in
46 their wintering grounds. Cacklers nest just about
47 exclusively on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and they
48 winter pretty much exclusively in Oregon.
49
50 So the population here is 250,000. Our
77
1 current population estimate at this point is around
2 176,000. In the past 20 years, we've seen a slight
3 increase. Just about 6 percent or .6 percent over that
4 time period. So a very slight increase.
5
6 The wintering area has shifted for
7 these birds. They used to winter almost exclusively in
8 the Central Valley of California and now they have
9 shifted north to the Willamette Valley of Oregon and
10 therein lies the problem in terms of crop depredation
11 that's occurring on the wintering grounds. In fact,
12 there's multiple problems on the wintering grounds. If
13 you read the statement by the Department of Oregon Fish
14 and Wildlife, they describe this.
15
16 So there's depredation, agricultural
17 crops, grass crops or turf crops, as well as winter
18 wheat and other grains. There's also nuisance issues
19 and public health. Birds are occurring on park lands
20 and in school yards where they haven't been before.
21 Finally, there's aircraft safety concerns both in the
22 Eugene airports as well as the Portland airports.
23
24 So these are new shifts in
25 concentrations of Cacklers in these areas that has the
26 Department of Fish and Wildlife in Oregon quite
27 concerned. When you read the statement, I went ahead
28 and took this out of it, the state of Oregon will --
29 because of the amount of pressure that they're feeling
30 on terms of loss of agricultural crops as well as
31 concerns on safety, Oregon is very reluctant to support
32 a further population growth for Cacklers and they will
33 very likely, almost certainly, recommend increasing
34 harvest rates to stabilize the population.
35 I think this is something that Dan Rosenberg with the
36 Department of Fish and Game may address in greater
37 detail.
38
39 So this will give you an indication of
40 what Cacklers have done. Let me go back. So here you
41 can see for the past 20 years you have a 0.6 percent
42 increase and then here's where the whopping increase
43 increased between 1985 and 1997. You can see the steep
44 increase here and then a relatively shallow increase
45 for the past few years. Again the population objective
46 is here at 250,000 and we're sitting at around 176,000
47 right now.
48
49 Relative to sea ducks, I thought I
50 would mention two species that probably have hit the
78
1 papers and been most of discussion, particularly for
2 Taqulik in her region. So Spectacled Eiders were
3 listed as threatened in 1993 and they were closed to
4 hunting. The Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, the population
5 that used to nest there declined by 96 percent.
6
7 In terms of its current population, the
8 Arctic Coastal Plain has about 12,000 birds and there's
9 about 12,000 birds on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta right
10 now. Roughly a population of 24 to 25,000 in Alaska.
11
12 Spectacled Eiders nest up on the Arctic
13 Coastal Plain. Also on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta they
14 also nest on the Chukotka Peninsula. In terms of the
15 wintering area, it was unknown until about probably 10
16 to 15 years ago and we had a satellite transmitter on a
17 bird that was tracked and you can see this large area
18 to the south of St. Lawrence and that's what it looks
19 like. That's the world's population of Spectacled
20 Eiders just about there. So, again, I showed you the
21 breeding areas that are occurring in Alaska here on the
22 Arctic Coastal Plain and in Western Alaska as well as
23 Russia, but this is all the birds in that area south of
24 St. Lawrence Island. So the world's population is
25 somewhere around 300,000 birds.
26
27 We just did a survey here a week ago.
28 Sent a twin-engine aircraft out and estimated the birds
29 and we do this by photography and then we actually --
30 some poor soul is actually picked out of our branch and
31 says, here, you get to count dots for a few hours. We
32 sub-sample this area and then we come up with a
33 population estimate.
34
35 Interesting enough, there's a recent
36 observation too for those of you that hunt walrus. We
37 have observations of walrus chasing these birds in the
38 wintering grounds. It was observed in the past and
39 then recently here by our pilot biologist.
40
41 MS. HILDEBRAND: Are they eating them?
42
43 MR. TAYLOR: You know, that's a good
44 question. I would assume they would have to be eating
45 them. I wouldn't think they'd be chasing them just for
46 fun. I mean I've got a golden retriever that chases
47 stuff, but it would seem funny for a walrus to be
48 chasing them as they were after food.
49
50 MR. DEVINE: I just have a question.
79
1 How high up were they when they took that picture?
2 That's not 150 feet.
3
4 MR. TAYLOR: No, it's not. In this
5 case, we're using a twin engine aircraft. It's a
6 contractor. Let's see. Julian, would you might know?
7
8 MR. FISHER: The question, what
9 elevation was this photograph taken at. I believe
10 these photographs were taken around 500 to 1,000 feet.
11 This is a very different type of survey than what Eric
12 was describing earlier where surveys that are flown at
13 100 feet are transected surveys where observers are
14 looking out both sides and counting the numbers of
15 birds that they pass. In this case there's no way that
16 anyone could possibly make a guess at a flock that
17 size, so photography is used to come up with a number
18 of birds. So individual photographs were taken and
19 then those would be counted at a later time.
20
21 MS. KANGAS: Is that above ground level
22 or mean sea level?
23
24 MR. FISHER: Above sea level, yeah.
25
26 MR. TAYLOR: Relative to Spectacled
27 Eiders, we're seeing a pretty significant increase of
28 Spectacled Eiders on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta,
29 particularly in the last few years. You can see from
30 about 2004 through 2009 we're seeing a definite
31 rebound, which is great news on the Yukon-Kuskokwim
32 Delta for Spectacled Eiders.
33
34 The Arctic Coastal Plain, we're seeing
35 for some reason a slight decline of about 1.5 percent
36 per year. The reasons behind those two different
37 trends are tough to identify.
38
39 Relative to Stellar's Eiders, the North
40 American breeding population was listed as threatened
41 in 1997 and closed to hunting. Barrow is the only
42 known major breeding area remaining in Alaska. The
43 Alaska breeding population that is listed as threatened
44 and protected is around 575 birds based on our best
45 estimate.
46
47 Those Stellars, as depicted by this
48 figure, shows quite a broad range and, indeed, there
49 may be a few individuals across the Arctic Coastal
50 Plain, but clearly the best to our knowledge, the
80
1 primary and remaining nesting area for Stellars occurs
2 in Barrow for North America. They also nest here on
3 the Chukotka Peninsula along the northern coastal
4 areas.
5
6 Wintering. They winter along the
7 Alaska Peninsula and out through the Aleutian Islands.
8
9 MR. REFT: Kodiak.
10
11 MR. TAYLOR: And as well as Kodiak,
12 right. In terms of our estimate for the Arctic Coastal
13 Plain based on our best estimate and this is -- you can
14 look at the histogram here. This is probably an
15 outlier here, but if you look at this, it's a
16 relatively flat rate, so we have a 1 percent growth
17 rate per year. When you look at that line, it's hard
18 to imagine much of a growth going on right now.
19 Taqulik.
20
21 MS. HEPA: I was just wondering if it's
22 the aerial survey?
23
24 MR. TAYLOR: Yeah, for the coastal
25 plain. Finally I wanted to mention something about
26 Yellow-billed Loons because the Service recently in
27 2010 or 2009 determined that Yellow-billed Loons were
28 warranted but precluded under the ESA, but nonetheless
29 they're being considered for protection.
30
31 Yellow-billed Loons nest from the
32 Canning River to Point Lay, also on St. Lawrence Island
33 and Seward Peninsula. They're long-lived birds, 20 to
34 30 years. It takes them a while to get to breeding
35 age, four to seven years before they start to nest.
36 They nest on freshwater lakes in the arctic and sub-
37 arctic. They're primarily, like other loons, fish-
38 eaters. Like other loons, they spend the majority of
39 their life in marine environments.
40
41 Yellow-billed Loons are closed to
42 subsistence, yet in 2007 we had -- a high harvest was
43 reported in the Bering Strait, Norton Sound Region. In
44 2009, as I said, the Fish and Wildlife Service
45 determined that based on the small population that we
46 have that it was warranted but precluded under the ESA
47 and then in 2010 we have recently determined for some
48 conservation measures, which are primarily centered
49 around outreach and education trying to talk to the
50 residents in St. Lawrence Island relative to the
81
1 harvest of loons and use of loons.
2
3 In terms of the population, in terms of
4 breeding and non-breeding loons for Alaska, our best
5 estimate are between 3,700 and 4,900 Yellow-billed
6 Loons. In Canada, surveys are incomplete in that area,
7 but our best estimate is 8,000. The same thing for
8 Russia, 5,000. So a worldwide estimate, you can see
9 quite a range there, somewhere between 16,000 and
10 32,000.
11
12 If you look at Alaska in terms of where
13 the birds primarily -- and this is the primary reason,
14 most of the Yellow-billed Loons are occurring on the
15 Arctic Coastal Plain. So about five times as many
16 birds on the Coastal Plain than in Western Alaska.
17
18 MS. TAHBONE: Can I interrupt you?
19
20 MR. TAYLOR: Yeah.
21
22 MS. TAHBONE: So when they're in
23 Western Alaska, that's not including St. Lawrence
24 Island.
25
26 MR. TAYLOR: That's correct, yeah. One
27 other issue that is going to happen this year is we're
28 going to do a Trumpeter Swan survey. We do this survey
29 every five years. It's a major effort throughout the
30 entire Pacific Flyway as well as coordination with
31 other provinces in Canada and states. The Pacific
32 Coast management objective is over 25,000 birds. Right
33 now we're very close to that in the Pacific Coast
34 population, basically at 25,000.
35
36 The North American population is around
37 34,000. In Alaska, we're proud owners of about 70
38 percent of the North American population and 95 percent
39 of the birds that occur in the Pacific Coast occur in
40 Alaska.
41
42 Trumpeter Swans are doing very well in
43 terms of growth rates. For the past 40 years or so, 6
44 percent for North America and just about 6 percent for
45 Alaska, so those are annual growth rates. Trumpeter
46 Swans are definitely expanding both in numbers and in
47 terms of their distribution. They've continued to
48 expand their range since 1950, so this is one species
49 that's doing very well.
50
82
1 In 2010, we will do our survey in
2 Alaska and then we'll coordinate the survey in the
3 Yukon Territories, Alberta and British Columbia. This
4 is a sample of what we will do in 2010 and some major
5 effort is going to occur in August. The areas that
6 we'll sample here, the 2010 random sample design that
7 will be used.
8
9 Finally, the last thing to alert
10 everybody is that these aircraft that you see here will
11 be retired starting probably next year, all three
12 Cessna 206's as well as the turbine Beaver, due to
13 safety concerns. We've been flying all these aircraft
14 with waivers from the Office of Aircraft Services and
15 we'll be going to a new survey aircraft made by a
16 company out of Idaho. We'll have four of these
17 aircraft. They're going to be delivered this year.
18 We've been waiting for them quite some time and they're
19 still undergoing the final test. In fact, we've got a
20 pilot in Minnesota right now at Whip Air Float Company,
21 the folks that make these things here, testing them
22 out. Then we'll do training in 2010.
23
24 Next year, similar to the survey that
25 -- or the question that Enoch and Peter, I think, asked
26 me in terms of visibility and trying to detect birds,
27 this is one example of what we're going to do. We're
28 going to fly the Cessna 206, the Beaver and the Kodiak.
29 We're going to do a visibility study, so we'll fly over
30 an area and try to determine the numbers of birds and
31 then determine what the difference is by using this new
32 aircraft versus our older aircraft. You can imagine
33 once you fly a new aircraft the size of your window
34 differs, your view as you look out the window may be
35 different, so we're going to do a test next year and
36 actually determine the rate between those three
37 aircraft. So we'll have two in Fairbanks and two in
38 Anchorage.
39
40 MS. HILDEBRAND: Why are you switching
41 to this aircraft if you don't know what it's doing or
42 what it's capable of?
43
44 MR. TAYLOR: Can you clarify what it's
45 capable of? What do you mean?
46
47 MS. HILDEBRAND: You're saying it's a
48 new aircraft and you don't know what the window
49 difference will be and you're going to be using them
50 for surveys and the difference in surveying is what I'm
83
1 asking about.
2
3 MR. TAYLOR: We're going to this
4 aircraft because it's a safer aircraft primarily. In
5 fact, we're being forced to a safer aircraft because
6 the Office of Aircraft Services has been concerned
7 about our flying the Cessna 206's with a waiver. So
8 we're going to a turbine-powered aircraft which by
9 design is safer.
10
11 In terms of -- no matter what aircraft
12 you go to, if it's a different design, you're always
13 going to have questions about is your visibility
14 different. If we could stay with a Cessna 206, there
15 are certain advantages certainly to it, we would stay
16 to it, but the current design, it's impossible to fly
17 the surveys that we do in Alaska without it being
18 considered over waiver. So we're being forced to it.
19 We're taking great lengths to make sure that our
20 surveys don't change.
21
22 Starting in 2011, if you see a change
23 in the numbers of Emperors or the numbers of Brant,
24 that's actually due to the population and not due to
25 the aircraft. So that's why we're doing the study.
26
27 MS. TAHBONE: I have some questions,
28 Eric. What are your plans regarding research for
29 Yellow-billed Loons?
30
31 MR. TAYLOR: In terms of?
32
33 MS. TAHBONE: Population.
34
35 MR. TAYLOR: We don't have any specific
36 or new projects relative to estimating Yellow-billed
37 Loons. USGS Joel Smuts is doing a study in Canada
38 looking at Yellow-billed Loons, but we don't have any
39 new designs right now for a survey or a specific
40 research.
41
42 MS. TAHBONE: And then you mentioned
43 climate change. What's your climate change program?
44 How do you determine your research under that?
45
46 MR. TAYLOR: Okay. Julian Fisher is
47 here. Has been the principal investigator for a long-
48 term study on the Y-K Delta and I might ask Julian to
49 come up because he's probably got some of the best
50 dataset in North American in terms of breeding
84
1 waterfowl and potential effects of climate change.
2
3 MS. TAHBONE: Is this new money -- I'm
4 kind of thinking about the new money that's going to be
5 coming in.
6
7 MR. TAYLOR: No, it's actually -- this
8 has been a long-term monitoring program on the Y-K
9 Delta on nest plots that Julian has been running in
10 terms of estimating the numbers and timing and
11 productivity of a suite of breeding birds. So I'll let
12 him address that. I'll get back to your question
13 relative to new fundings that Fish and Wildlife Service
14 has received through what's called Landscape
15 Conservation Cooperatives. I don't know if you've
16 heard that term or not.
17
18 MS. TAHBONE: Yeah, that's what I was
19 interested in.
20
21 MR. TAYLOR: Yeah, I'll address that
22 because we are starting some new things relative to
23 that.
24
25 MS. TAHBONE: I don't need to hear from
26 him unless somebody else does.
27
28 MR. TAYLOR: We are going to start a
29 new study. We're actually going to have a position, a
30 two-year post-doctoral appointment come in. It's in
31 collaboration with USGS. There are three aspects of
32 the study. We actually have some of the best data in
33 North America on abundance and distribution of birds on
34 the Arctic Coastal Plain. So what this person is going
35 to do is he or she will look at the dataset that we
36 have collected on the Arctic Coastal Plain relative to
37 the suite of species that nest there and we'll look at
38 the distribution and how that distribution and density
39 of birds has shifted or possibly has shifted over the
40 time period, which is over 20 years that we've been
41 collecting data up on the Arctic Coastal Plain.
42
43 We're then going to take that
44 information and overlay it on habitat maps. So we're
45 going to work with people that know about -- that have
46 typed the habitat and classified the habitat on the
47 Arctic Coastal Plain and we'll be able to identify what
48 habitats are selected by what species. So we'll look
49 at White-fronts, Brant, Pintails, the suite of species
50 that occur on the Arctic Coastal Plain, and come up
85
1 with a habitat association. And then we'll look at how
2 habitat has changed over time and how that possibly has
3 affected distribution of birds.
4
5 Finally, the final step to the analysis
6 will be looking at, and this may require -- this may be
7 years out, but looking at the most relevant climate
8 change models that are appropriate for the arctic and
9 then trying to predict how climate change may affect
10 habitats, wetlands and other types of habitat.
11
12 For example, we have large chunks of
13 property on some of our National Wildlife Refuges that
14 were very important waterbird and waterfowl habitat and
15 now moose habitat. The wetlands have dried up
16 significantly and has gone to alder and willow. In
17 this case, I mean we can actually see this over the
18 time period that we've been doing our surveys. So
19 we'll use these climate change models in the Arctic
20 Coastal Plain to try to predict how things might change
21 in the future.
22
23 So that's one example. That person
24 will be housed in the Waterfowl Management branch.
25 It's going to be funded by the U.S. Geological Survey,
26 Alaska Science Center. That work will start this year.
27
28 MS. TAHBONE: I had one more question.
29 When are you going to be doing the survey for Emperor
30 Geese this year?
31
32 MR. TAYLOR: That survey is coming up.
33 I'll have Julian -- I want to say within.....
34
35 MR. FISHER: April 26th.
36
37 MR. TAYLOR: Okay. So next week. I
38 knew it was soon.
39
40 MS. TAHBONE: What time was it last
41 year?
42
43 MR. TAYLOR: Same time.
44
45 MS. TAHBONE: I thought that was an
46 issue regarding the timing of it. Was it done later or
47 earlier? When is it normally done?
48
49 MR. DEVINE: Last year they did the
50 survey three days later because of weather conditions
86
1 and found 30,000 more birds than the year before.
2 They're still not taking into consideration local and
3 traditional knowledge on when the birds are actually
4 moving. They're out there doing the survey while the
5 birds are flying. Just a week or 10 days later would
6 probably bring the numbers up a lot.
7
8 MS. TAHBONE: So did you guys re-
9 evaluate that based on the information that you got
10 from last year's survey of the timing of your survey or
11 are you just doing it the same time?
12
13 MR. YOUNG: I'm not aware of any new
14 information that would have caused us to have shifted
15 the survey one way or the other in terms of -- but,
16 Peter, I'd be interested in hearing what your
17 observations were. And Julian Fisher is here, who is
18 the project leader for the pilot biologists that do
19 that survey, so let's chat to determine what you think
20 we should be doing.
21
22 MS. TAHBONE: I mean the records show,
23 right? I mean we were presented information at our
24 fall meeting. Dan provided -- I think it was Dan that
25 provided information to us showing that significant
26 increase from the previous survey.
27
28 MR. TAYLOR: Relative to Emperors?
29
30 MS. TAHBONE: Uh-huh.
31
32 MR. TAYLOR: Let me just go back and
33 take a look at it real quick. So for Emperors the
34 population was estimated around 60, maybe 65,000 and
35 then we had an estimate of somewhere around 95,000. So
36 whether that's due to survey timing or just variability
37 in the survey is very difficult to say. Based on one
38 year, it would be difficult for me to say, yes, it was
39 survey timing that caused that increase.
40
41 CHAIRMAN NANENG: We've got to move
42 along on the agenda, but I've got a couple questions
43 before we get away from the information here.
44
45 MR. TAYLOR: Okay.
46
47 CHAIRMAN NANENG: One, is there any
48 information regarding trawl fleet impact in the Gulf of
49 Alaska on the wintering grounds for Stellar's Eiders?
50 Are there any known impacts?
87
1 MR. TAYLOR: Impacts of what? I'm
2 sorry.
3
4 CHAIRMAN NANENG: By the trawl fleet.
5 By the pollock trawl fleet.
6
7 MR. TAYLOR: Oh, the trawl. Not that
8 I'm aware of, Myron. I'm not aware of any.
9
10 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Has there been any
11 inquiries as to whether there's any impacts by the
12 trawl fleet?
13
14 MR. TAYLOR: Not that I'm aware of.
15
16 CHAIRMAN NANENG: I think that's one
17 thing that possibly should be asked. The other one is
18 oil and gas exploration in Eastern Arctic state of
19 Alaska, Prudhoe Bay. I know there's been reports of
20 nets catching Yellow-billed Loons in Colville River, is
21 that right? I'm just asking that question. Were there
22 baseline studies prior to the oil and gas exploration
23 for the Yellow-billed Loons and Stellar's Eiders for
24 that matter before oil and gas exploration was
25 executed?
26
27 MR. TAYLOR: Specific to that region,
28 so oil and gas was discovered in the early '70s or late
29 '60s, but the development started in the '70s. You
30 know, in terms of specific studies for that region, I'm
31 not aware of any. Our surveys have been ongoing well
32 before then, but I can't provide any more detail than
33 that.
34
35 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thank you. Did you
36 have a question, Taqulik.
37
38 MS. HEPA: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was
39 just wondering, maybe I missed it, but for the
40 Spectacled Eider did you have like a target goal for a
41 population -- I don't know the right term, like a goal
42 on where you want the birds to be at? Because I know
43 that they're listed as threatened and it was showing
44 that they were increasing to some degree. How far are
45 you -- is the population from the targeted goal?
46
47 MR. TAYLOR: That's a good question and
48 actually would have been a good question to ask Sonja
49 Jahrsdoerfer with the Endangered Species Program. I am
50 not aware of like a population objective set for
88
1 Spectacled Eiders where it would reach a certain point
2 and then become non-threatened. Certainly we're
3 seeing, like I said, very positive population growth on
4 the Y-K Delta and we're not seeing that on the Arctic
5 Coastal Plain, but certainly the population is doing
6 very well right now in the Y-K Delta.
7
8 CHAIRMAN NANENG: We do have under
9 Goose Management Plan a section that's specific to the
10 Spectacled Eiders that we're supposed to not hunt them
11 for a while until a certain population objective is
12 reached. So there must be an increase in numbers based
13 on your report of Spectacled Eiders in the Y-K Delta.
14 So maybe at some point in the future we'll go and
15 revisit that plan and see how it may allow people in
16 the Y-K Delta to also be able to hunt Spectacled Eiders
17 again.
18
19 MR. TAYLOR: Okay.
20
21 MS. HEPA: At least with the two birds
22 on the North Slope that are of concern, one of them is
23 a Spectacled Eider and the other one is a Stellar's
24 Eider and something that we need to keep in mind.
25 Like, for example, the Spectacled Eider, they're
26 increasing in your area and there's a slight downward
27 trend on the North Slope. Sometimes birds nest on the
28 North Slope for the Stellar's Eider, but sometimes they
29 don't. There's a huge population of them that do in
30 the Chukotka Russia area. Like caribou, sometimes the
31 Western Arctic Caribou Herd will and the
32 Teshekpuk Lake Caribou Herd, sometimes they change
33 their range and we know that from caribou collar
34 information. Maybe it's the same thing with the birds,
35 that some years they nest on the North Slope and other
36 years they nest on the Y-K Delta. I think that we need
37 to seriously look at that to see if there's any change
38 and maybe you guys have done that and I'm not aware of
39 it.
40
41 MR. TAYLOR: No, that's an excellent
42 question, particularly for Stellar's Eiders. We don't
43 have excellent information or very good information at
44 all in terms of could birds be bypassing Barrow one
45 year and then going to Russia to nest, for example. Do
46 they switch breeding areas. For most waterfowl,
47 they're pretty -- they're site fidelity, their tendency
48 to come back to the area that they were hatched from is
49 very high, so you usually don't see that shifting going
50 back and forth.
89
1 With that said, we were under that
2 impression for Brant on the Y-K Delta and it took some
3 pretty serious analysis for us to be convinced that
4 these birds are actually probably dispersing from these
5 traditional colonies that Myron is well aware of and
6 possibly moving into these other areas that in the past
7 have not been that important.
8
9 Birds can shift in their breeding
10 distribution, but in terms of nesting in Barrow one
11 year and then going to Chukotka or going back and
12 forth, that would be pretty new information.
13
14 MS. HEPA: We need to find the answer
15 to that.
16
17 MR. TAYLOR: Anything else.
18
19 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Ida.
20
21 MS. HILDEBRAND: Just a point of
22 information. Approximately 10 years ago, possibly
23 slightly longer, the subsistence users in King Cove and
24 in that area were telling us that the Brants were
25 wintering in their area and they were kind of shot down
26 as saying, no, that wasn't true and I'm glad to hear
27 that they have been proven true.
28
29 MR. TAYLOR: Well, if it's any
30 consolation, I have a professor from University of
31 Nevada Reno that vowed that Brant were not dispersing
32 and all of us worked long hours thinking that was the
33 case and finally after our analysis over the past few
34 months we discovered that he's probably wrong, that
35 these birds are dispersing. It's always good to keep
36 an open mind.
37
38 CHAIRMAN NANENG: That doesn't happen
39 to be Jim Sedinger?
40
41 MR. TAYLOR: Oh, well, you didn't hear
42 it from me. Thank you.
43
44 CHAIRMAN NANENG: If there's no other
45 discussion regarding the population and trends, then
46 we'll go on to the next item, item D. Or was that
47 request to be tabled?
48
49 MS. HEPA: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I
50 will be brief on this one. This is an annual one that
90
will do a quick presentation or introduction
3 to that proposal.
4
5 MR. PEDERSON: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
6 This proposal has been in front of the AMBCC Board
7 since 2005 or 6, I believe. I submitted it late. I
8 missed the December deadline, but I think I submitted
9 it in January sometime. It's in your packet. But
10 what's not in your packet and what I submitted along
11 with the proposal is the cultural and traditional use
12 of Yellow-billed Loons on the Arctic Slope by Inupiat
13 Eskimos and it's a PowerPoint and I submitted it with
14 the proposal, but the attachment was not in your
15 packets.
16
17 MS. DEWHURST: There is some copies on
18 the back table.
19
20 MR. PEDERSON: So there's copies in the
21 back. So it's just the similar proposal that was
22 submitted last year. One of the things we wanted to
23 hear from the Service just to refresh our memory is --
24 you know, we've been doing this for a few years now,
25 this exact same proposal, the exact same words, so we
26 just wanted to be reminded why do we still need to
27 submit this proposal over and over again.
28
29 MR. TAYLOR: I don't know the history
30 of it, so it's a
31 little difficult for me to say. Right now Yellow-
32 billed Loons are closed to harvest and in order to have
33 any take of Yellow-billed Loons this proposal is
34 necessary and I believe it has to be done on an annual
35 basis.
36
37 The Service remains concerned. The
38 bird is warranted but precluded at this point, which
39 means it could be a candidate species. It's a
40 population and species we will be remained concerned
41 with. So at this point I think it would be premature
42 for us just to allow a regulation to be in permanent
43 place allowing up to 20 Yellow-billed Loons to be
44 taken. It's the best answer I can give you.
45
46 MR. PEDERSON: All right. Thanks.
47 Along with that I'd just like to ask Josh Bacon, our
48 biologist, to come up and as part of our obligation
49 just give you a really brief summary of our 2009 -- our
50 reporting requirements for last year.
91
1 biologist -- our reporting requirements for last year.
2
3 MR. BACON: Joshua Bacon, North Slope
4 Borough, for the record. Taq and Mike just asked me to
5 say a couple things about this report that we're
6 obligated to submit on an annual basis as part of the
7 regulation and I'll just be quick, give you an
8 overview. This report contains information about Loons
9 that were reported to us as entangled and found dead
10 and kept. There's also a little bit of information
11 about Loons that were brought to our attention that
12 were entangled but were still alive.
13
14 The gist of it this year is that we had
15 two Yellow-billed Loons that were volunteered to us as
16 found dead and kept. Both of those Loons were in
17 Nelson Lagoon, northwest Nelson Lagoon, and two Yellow-
18 billed Loons were called into the department as
19 entangled but still alive and fishers needed help
20 releasing those birds. DWM staff aided in that and
21 released two Yellow-billed Loons unharmed.
22
23 Is there any questions?
24
25 MR. TAYLOR: Josh, can you give me an
26 idea of the extent of injuries on those two birds?
27 Were they perfectly fine or did you have any indication
28 that they may or may not survive?
29
30 MR. BACON: Sure. Both Loons were in
31 very good condition. I don't think they were in the
32 nets very long. In Nelson Lagoon, there's a road that
33 runs along a large extent of the fishing area, so when
34 people drive by and they see entangled Loons, they tend
35 to inform us. So we can usually catch them pretty
36 early, even in late hours because it's light 24 hours a
37 day and there's still traffic on that road.
38
39 MR. TAYLOR: Thank you.
40
41 MS. HEPA: Just one thing I wanted to
42 add, too. We do outreach again with the fishermen from
43 the North Slope on reporting. Through one of our
44 projects we have fishermen log how many fish they catch
45 and which river and whatnot, so we are in communication
46 with them. One of the questions that's in their log
47 form is if Yellow-billed Loons were entangled in nets
48 and they report it. We receive those on an annual
49 basis and this year we didn't get anyone reporting that
50 they were, but historically we have had those recorded
92
1 in the fishermen's log books.
2
3 MR. TAYLOR: Myron, one question for
4 Mike. When the
5 proposal was presented last year, we had a discussion
6 in terms of some potential mitigative measures that the
7 Borough could consider to decrease the likelihood or
8 probability that Loons may be captured and I wanted to
9 know if you had an opportunity to do any research
10 relative to that or do any investigations or try any
11 techniques. We didn't really have any specific
12 objectives or specific recommendations for you and I
13 probably am remiss in not calling you later after the
14 meeting and brainstorming in terms of some cost
15 effective things that may work, but I didn't know if
16 you had the opportunity relative to that or not.
17
18 MR. PEDERSON: Thank you, Eric. You
19 reminded me of it. I was going to say something about
20 it earlier, but I just forgot. I do recall that
21 conversation we had and I do recall at the SRC meeting
22 in D.C. in July that that was a request from the SRC as
23 well. We did talk about it internally within our
24 department about what we could possibly do. I've also
25 talked about it with one or two other biologists in the
26 Lower 48 that were at the Pacific Flyway meetings in
27 July as well.
28
29 But to get to the point, no, we haven't
30 identified any other conservation measures to protect
31 Yellow-billed Loons as far as them getting entangled in
32 fishing nets. We did have some ideas floating around
33 about some kind of flags or something, like similar to
34 what we use for Spectacled and Stellars on wires, what
35 are they called, bird deflectors. We thought about
36 some type of bells or something, but for us as
37 subsistence fishers up there, we just didn't think it
38 was feasible to do that.
39
40 I haven't made an effort to talk with
41 the other biologists in the Lower 48 where I understand
42 that they spend a lot of money in the research on
43 trying to keep birds out of fishing nets, similar --
44 not quite as similar as to what we have, but a similar
45 process that has happened. We just haven't looked at
46 any of those issues further just because our nets are
47 not very big. We get to them with little rowboats. We
48 haven't had the time to look into any of those
49 additional measures.
50
93
1 MR. TAYLOR: Thanks, Mike. I guess I
2 would like to offer -- Tamara Zeller is sitting in the
3 back, our outreach specialist and an expert on Loons in
4 Alaska in my division. As I said, I think I was remiss
5 in not following up with you in terms of trying to work
6 with the North Slope Borough. I guess I would still
7 like to stress we'd like to see if there's any
8 potential opportunities out there to decrease the
9 likelihood of Loons being captured. Keeping in mind
10 that you're dealing with residents that can't likely
11 afford complex, expensive, difficult, not feasible
12 methods.
13
14 What we had envisioned, you know, it
15 could be something as simple as a child's windmill that
16 could be used to cause birds to stay away from nets.
17 Again, I haven't had the opportunity like yourself to
18 really look into it, but I would like to investigate
19 what possibilities there might be.
20
21 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Taqulik.
22
23 MS. HEPA: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I
24 thank you for that comment. I just want to say that
25 the take is so low that I don't think it should be such
26 a focus. I do a lot of fishing in the summer up on the
27 river and maybe once in the last 15 years we had a Loon
28 get caught in our net. We do daily surveys driving
29 where people fish off of Barrow. We do daily four-
30 wheeler surveys to check the nets. Josh and Mike and
31 others do the survey on a daily basis, but it's a rare
32 occasion and I don't think we should focus so much
33 attention on this issue.
34
35 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Joe.
36
37 MR. HICKS: I'd like to say I believe
38 the North Slope has
39 made extreme, extraordinary efforts toward the Loon
40 effort here and I really applaud them for it. I
41 appreciate all that you have done. Just by the
42 reporting of two being caught and two being released
43 that pretty much tells me that your effort is being
44 realized. It's working. Again, like I say, I applaud
45 you for it.
46
47 I do have one question for Mike,
48 though. You said nothing from the language of last
49 year's proposal has changed?
50
94
1 MR. PEDERSON: No, nothing.
2
3 MR. HICKS: Therefore, Mr. Chairman, I
4 move to adopt that proposal.
5
6 MS. HEPA: Second.
7
8 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Motion made and
9 seconded. Any further discussion.
10
11 MS. HEPA: Call for question.
12
13 CHAIRMAN NANENG: The question has been
14 called for. All in favor say aye.
15
16 IN UNISON: Aye.
17
18 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Those opposed say no.
19
20 (No opposing votes)
21
22 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Motion to adopt
23 Proposal 1 from the North Slope Borough has been
24 adopted.
25
26 MR. SHIEDT: Myron.
27
28 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Yes.
29
30 MR. SHIEDT: I was going to say exactly
31 what Joe said. I would applaud Barrow for bending over
32 backwards, doing their best on those Yellow-billed
33 Loons and only four is being caught and these are
34 accidently caught birds. They're not targeted on the
35 nets. The birds were hunting the fish, the same fish
36 the Eskimos were trying to harvest. I would suggest
37 don't make an issue about this. It's not being done on
38 purpose.
39
40 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Josh.
41
42 MR. BACON: I just feel I need to
43 clarify a couple of things so there's no
44 miscommunication. Joe, I appreciate what you said, but
45 just for clarification this isn't an estimate of total
46 entanglements on the Slope. This is information that
47 was volunteered to us as an obligation of the
48 regulation. I don't want people to think that this is
49 a total estimate of Slope-wide entanglement.
50
95
1 A couple of things that we found -- you
2 know, we've kept what was said about looking at methods
3 to decrease entanglement all year and what we found is
4 communication with the fishers and doing more outreach.
5 One thing we did is we added a section in the back of a
6 fishing log book that talks about the Yellow-billed
7 Loon is a species of concern and that we're concerned
8 about it and to record any entanglement incidents and
9 we also encourage frequent net checks in order to catch
10 these Loons before they get entangled too severe. This
11 way they're easier to release by the fishers or us.
12
13 I think that's it.
14
15 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Mike.
16
17 MR. PEDERSON: I just want to thank the
18 Council again for however many years I've been sitting
19 up here presenting this Loon proposal. I just want to
20 thank you guys for your continued support.
21
22 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Thanks, Mike.
23
24 MR. HICKS: Can we go for a 10-minute
25 break?
26
27 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Yes, a 10-minute
28 break.
29
30 (Off record)
31
32 (On record)
33
34 CHAIRMAN NANENG: We'll go ahead and
35 call the meeting back to order. The time is 3:23 p.m.
36 On the agenda we have the Oregon Cackling Canada Goose
37 depredation issue. Right after the discussion of this
38 I request to be excused because I have to catch a
39 flight. On Thursday evenings there's no more flights
40 to
41 Bethel. Apparently Alaska Airlines has enough traffic
42 for other parts of the state that they took away one
43 flight going to Bethel on Thursday. I have to catch
44 the flight tonight so I can prepare for the meeting
45 that we're going to have tomorrow and also on Friday.
46
47 For the meeting that we talked about
48 for the AMBCC, we're going to set up a teleconference
49 number and have discussion on Friday morning regarding
50 what we're going to be talking about with the
96
1 Department of Interior, the solicitor and BIA. I've
2 requested our secretary back in Bethel to get the
3 number and the extension. The other number that you
4 have is the teleconference number for Friday
5 afternoon's meeting at noon.
6
7 There was a comment during the break
8 that whenever we have guests come out to the villages
9 to talk about any issues related to waterfowl, wildlife
10 management or even meetings that impact the community
11 or the region we usually host a potluck in the villages
12 or in the region or in the hub where we have our
13 meetings. Enoch noticed that there were like about
14 three women out in the audience that have been plugging
15 some ducks or geese, or maybe four including Donna over
16 there in the corner, to cook for a potluck dinner for
17 the group here.
18
19 MS. ZELLER: You may not want to eat it
20 if I cook it.
21
22 CHAIRMAN NANENG: So for the next AMBCC
23 meeting, if we happen to have it here, we anticipate
24 having a potluck dinner ready for us. We can help
25 Oregon reduce their depredation issue with a few
26 Cacklers here and there.
27
28 Dan, can you come up and make the
29 presentation on the next item. It's the Oregon
30 Cackling Canada Goose issue.
31
32 MR. ROSENBERG: Hi. Dan Rosenberg. I'm
33 pretty much going to introduce Bob Trost to really make
34 the presentation because we had talked about this
35 earlier and Bob was going to do it, so I didn't really
36 prepare it, but just to give you the background on it.
37 At the last Pacific Flyway Council meeting, Oregon
38 essentially served notice that they are going to try to
39 initiate the process to increase the harvest, the
40 winter harvest in Oregon starting this fall and Bob
41 wants to come up and talk about that.
42
43 Currently the three-year average is
44 something around 165,000 birds. The population
45 objective that was established in the Cackling Canada
46 Goose Management Plan, which is intertwined with the
47 Hooper Bay Plan and the Y-K Delta Goose Management
48 Plan, is 250,000. The current harvest strategy is
49 roughly 10 percent of whatever the current population
50 estimate is based on the three-year average. So this
97
1 would essentially -- Oregon's proposal may involve
2 changing harvest strategy to try to keep the population
3 stable at 165, 170,000 birds so it wouldn't increase
4 anymore. That's what they're essentially talking about
5 and Bob can follow up on that.
6
7 MR. TROST: Thanks, Dan. And thanks
8 for the time to explain this on behalf of Oregon. As
9 you know, this has been a long-standing problem and the
10 WCC has made a couple trips down to Oregon and we've
11 tried to work together to resolve some of these issues.
12 They've continued to develop and Oregon finds itself in
13 a position where the agricultural community has gone to
14 the State legislature and gotten the State legislature
15 involved and formed a commission to look into this
16 issue.
17
18 Their opinion is that given the current
19 state of this situation they can't afford any more
20 Canada Geese until they are able to put some longer-
21 term programs in place that will provide sufficient
22 winter habitat on public lands or on lands which they
23 have conservation easements to support them.
24
25 So what they're going to do this year
26 for sure is they're going to come in and they're going
27 to ask for an increase in the Cackling Canada Goose bag
28 in this depredation area that they're having these
29 problems in. Of course, that does affect growth
30 towards the population objective and a number of other
31 things. So they wanted to be sure that folks here were
32 well aware that that request would be coming.
33
34 Right now their intent is not to
35 abandon the population objective that's been
36 established in the plans, but they're simply sort of
37 asking for a time out. They want a little bit of time
38 to try to work with the agricultural community and try
39 to address some of these depredation problems that they
40 have. So they will be requesting an increase in the
41 bag limit.
42
43 In addition, there's under serious
44 discussion -- and this probably is worthy of some
45 thought and discussion on behalf of the AMBCC, probably
46 not at this meeting but outside this meeting.
47 We have had a long-standing practice of not issuing
48 depredation kill permits for game animals in
49 particular. In other words, a permit that would allow
50 a landowner to go out and shoot animals that are
98
1 causing damage on their lands. Historically, we have
2 avoided issuing those kinds of permits for game
3 animals, particularly for geese.
4
5 There's a request from the agricultural
6 community in Oregon and Washington that they be allowed
7 a limited amount of this harvest that they're asking to
8 increase be dedicated to this specific purpose. The
9 real reason for this is the time of the year in which
10 their worst damage occurs is the time of year after the
11 Migratory Bird Treaty mandates that the hunting season
12 be closed.
13
14 So when the hunting season has to close
15 in the Lower 48 on March 10th and that's established in
16 the treaty, that period from then until when the geese
17 leave, which has extended a bit and now runs until
18 about the 15th of April, is a period of time in which
19 the geese are doing the greatest damage to the crops
20 and they can't allow any hunting to try to drive them
21 off their property. So what they're asking for is
22 permission to -- in addition to the other scare
23 techniques and they use canons and flags and a number
24 of other things to try to keep the geese off these
25 crops too, they're asking for permission to kill some
26 of these birds to reinforce that and help them keep
27 these birds out of these areas.
28
29 That's a subject that the government,
30 Fish and Wildlife Service has a process in place that
31 would allow us to issue permits for this activity.
32 Again, that's one of those things we would not want to
33 do without you being aware of it and having an
34 opportunity to comment on it.
35
36 So those are the two actions that are
37 being proposed this year, increase in the bag limit on
38 Cackling Canada Geese and to issue a limited number of
39 depredation permits that would allow them to kill
40 geese, Cackling Geese, primarily outside of the hunting
41 season.
42
43 I'd answer any questions about that.
44 Yes.
45
46 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Go ahead, Ida.
47
48 MS. HILDEBRAND: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
49 Am I understanding you correctly that you say their
50 worst time when they want these kill permits are March
99
1 10th through 15th of April?
2
3 MR. TROST: Yes.
4
5 MS. HILDEBRAND: Is there any
6 provisions or allowances that would allow Alaska
7 Natives to go down and hunt during that time?
8
9 (Laughter)
10
11 MR. TROST: It's an interesting idea.
12 There's none that I'm aware of right now, although you
13 could certainly act as one of their agents to take
14 these birds.
15
16 MS. HILDEBRAND: By invitation.
17
18 CHAIRMAN NANENG: I think if you're
19 going to be hunting down there, they will require you
20 to buy a duck stamp as well as Oregon state hunting
21 license.
22
23 MS. HILDEBRAND: No, they buy the duck
24 stamp.
25
26 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Molly.
27
28 MS. CHYTHLOOK: Are they just going to
29 be killing these or is this going to be a sport hunt or
30 what kind of a hunt is this?
31
32 MR. TROST: No, it's not intended to be
33 a hunt. It's really a scare tactic really.
34
35 MS. CHYTHLOOK: So they're not going to
36 be killing the birds, they're just going to scare them?
37
38 MR. TROST: Well, their intent is to
39 kill at least some.
40
41 MS. CHYTHLOOK: And then what are they
42 going to do with them?
43
44 MR. TROST: The way that our permits
45 usually work is they would have to be what we call
46 donated for scientific purposes, so we would probably
47 take those birds and use them for studies.
48
49 MS. CHYTHLOOK: Are they going to have
50 a plan of harvesting X percent, like 10 percent of the
100
1 population?
2
3 MR. TROST: Right now the harvest
4 strategy allows for taking 10 percent of the population
5 and right now we believe there's about 175,000. Most
6 of those geese are being killed currently in the Y-K
7 Delta during the subsistence season or during the sport
8 harvest season in Washington and Oregon. What Oregon
9 is asking to do right now is to increase that take
10 slightly and use some of that slight increase for this.
11 In reality, they're not going to be killing a lot more
12 geese than they kill right now, but there is a
13 different methodology for this agricultural depredation
14 that could be involved.
15
16 MS. CHYTHLOOK: So is there going to be
17 encouraged to increase harvests here in Alaska for
18 Cackling?
19
20 MR. TROST: The state of Oregon would
21 be overjoyed if you would increase the harvest in
22 Alaska. The risk you run is much like Eric talked
23 about earlier with Emperor Geese. All these goose
24 populations, if you get the harvest too high, then the
25 population declines. Right now we're at the stage with
26 Cacklers where we're just barely increasing and the
27 folks in Oregon would like to stop that increase even
28 until they get some of these other things straightened
29 out.
30
31 But you take too many of them and what
32 will happen is they'll go down fairly dramatically. As
33 you may recall, we had Cackling Canada Geese driven
34 down to about 25,000 primarily through harvest. We've
35 brought them back to 175,000 primarily by controlling
36 harvest. What we've got is a situation where we were
37 successful in restoring a population, but it changed
38 its wintering distribution such that it now causes some
39 considerable agricultural depredation and that's what
40 we're trying to resolve.
41
42 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Joe.
43
44 MR. HICKS: Is this harvest -- is it
45 all the way up to the
46 state legislature for instance? Is the legislature in
47 support of that harvest?
48
49 MR. TROST: Yes. Believe it or not the
50 group that I sit on with Ron Anglin, who couldn't be
101
1 here because he's dealing with this legislature, it's
2 chaired by a senator, Senator Betsy Johnson, and has a
3 state representative on this little group that's just
4 trying to work on goose task force issues. It has a
5 great deal of political interest because, for the most
6 part, Oregon is an agricultural state. Agriculture is
7 very important there. They raise a lot of crops. It's
8 probably one of the primary ways in which the state
9 earns its money, much like oil would be in Alaska.
10
11 MR. HICKS: I lost my track of mind.
12 What was I going to say?
13
14 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Peter. Or do you
15 want to.....
16
17 MR. RABE: (Shakes head)
18
19 MR. DEVINE: I know a couple of years
20 ago Anchorage had a
21 goose problem. Anchorage is an excluded area from the
22 subsistence harvest, but they were given a special use
23 permit for the people to go and harvest, but it was
24 only a short little window and it worked. They took
25 care of the ones out by the airport. They took care of
26 the ones downtown. They depleted them pretty good.
27 Have you guys thought of getting a special use permit?
28
29 MR. TROST: Essentially that's what
30 this depredation permit is intended to be. The same
31 kind of thing. A relatively short window of time, not
32 a whole lot taken, but enough to try to fix the
33 problem.
34
35 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Joe and then Ida.
36
37 MR. HICKS: I remember what it was now.
38 What would happen if we decide not to take action or
39 not support the proposal?
40
41 MR. TROST: Eventually this will come
42 before the Service
43 Regulation Committee and they'll have to make a
44 decision on this. One of the things that Oregon wanted
45 to make sure is that if you would care to comment on
46 this, that you would have this opportunity. You know
47 that this is going to come down the line and you have
48 an opportunity to make comments on it.
49
50 If you choose to say nothing, much like
102
1 we talked about earlier, regulation, silence is sort of
2 an endorsement without saying we think this is a good
3 idea. You could also say you think it's a good idea or
4 you could take the stance where you're not in favor of
5 this and the Service Regulations Committee would take
6 that under advisement when it considered that proposal
7 and it may or may not support it because of that.
8
9 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Ida.
10
11 MS. HILDEBRAND: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
12 These animals that would be killed under this special
13 permit, would they be eaten or just tossed?
14
15 MR. TROST: Well, the general practice
16 is neither of those things happen. The farmers aren't
17 allowed to keep them and that's primarily as a
18 deterrent for them shooting them just to get them to
19 eat. They're required to turn them over to us, to the
20 State or the Federal agency. We have a number of
21 issues that we're always looking for birds for. It
22 might be a genetic study. It might be a study of
23 whether pesticides are becoming concentrated in them or
24 whatever. So we would use those birds for what we call
25 scientific purposes. We would use them in these
26 studies rather than going out in the wild and taking
27 birds.
28
29 CHAIRMAN NANENG: From AVCP Waterfowl
30 Conservation Committee is going to have a big impact on
31 our people out in the Y-K Delta, so we intend to make
32 comments. I talked to Dale a little bit, but one of
33 the things that we'll have to do is also contact the
34 Waterfowl Conservation Committee members because over
35 the years our villages have tried to abide by the
36 conservation measures that have been agreed to under
37 the Goose Management Plan.
38
39 If there's further reductions on the
40 Cackling Canada Geese, population is going to have a
41 big impact and we're going to have to do a lot of
42 communications with our villages as to how much we
43 could potentially harvest. We've seen the farmland
44 depredation with the meetings that we've gone to down
45 in Oregon. We sympathize with the farmers, however we
46 also are concerned about the fact that our people need
47 to eat waterfowl for subsistence purposes.
48
49 So, from our perspective, we're caught
50 between a rock and a hard place. However, we want to
103
1 maintain as high a number of Cackling Canada Geese as
2 possible because we had quite an extensive period of
3 time where we all had to give up hunting of Cackling
4 Canada Geese for a while until such time that they
5 reached a certain population level.
6
7 Go ahead, Ida.
8
9 MS. HILDEBRAND: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
10 Could it be part of your study to see how returning the
11 birds to Alaska Natives in the Y-K Delta for food would
12 impact their efforts on conservation or reduce the
13 number of their take as required for their populations?
14
15 MR. TROST: You mean to have the birds
16 that they took shipped here for folks to use for food?
17
18 MS. HILDEBRAND: (Nods)
19
20 MR. TROST: I think the problem that we
21 would run into is that it's expensive to do that and
22 there's an open question as to who would pay. But you
23 might make that recommendation and see what happened
24 with it. It's conceivable that the farmers are
25 concerned enough about this. They might foot the bill
26 for shipping them up here.
27
28 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Peter.
29
30 MR. DEVINE: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Has
31 the State thought of any kind of a farm buy-back
32 program to increase the habitat?
33
34 MR. TROST: That's one of the things
35 they're looking for a little bit of time to work on.
36 We call them easements, but it's the same idea. Some
37 of these farm fields, they tend to be the ones that are
38 closely located to our refuges. They get hit really
39 hard and it's hard for the farmers to get a crop off
40 of them. Especially with the numbers of geese that
41 they're dealing with now.
42
43 So the thinking is that the State would
44 pay them a certain amount of money per acre for what
45 they call a conservation easement. They would plant
46 that to something that the geese like to eat and then
47 they would let the geese eat it and they would get
48 their money from the State and the State would have
49 essentially additional wintering ground for the geese.
50 It takes a while to put a program like that in place
104
1 and get it funded. In the short term, they'd like to
2 not get any more geese until they get that up and
3 running.
4
5 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any more questions.
6
7 (No comments)
8
9 CHAIRMAN NANENG: That was for
10 informational purposes, but we definitely will need to
11 make some comments. I know that when I get back with
12 our Waterfowl Conservation Committee we'll inform the
13 villages of the plans that Oregon has. We've tried to
14 work with the farmers. We've invited them up here to
15 Alaska, but unfortunately the only time that they've
16 been up here is when there's snow on the ground and
17 never a bird in the sky. So we'll invite them up again
18 and hopefully it wouldn't be in the middle of their
19 growing season. So we're aware of their issues as
20 well.
21
22 MR. HICKS: How much time do we have?
23
24 MR. TROST: The proposals will come
25 before SRC as part of the late season proposals process
26 and that will be the first week in August. So these
27 proposals will be made formally at their July Council
28 meeting and then they'll be presented to the Service
29 Regulations Committee the following week. Because
30 that's obviously a very short time frame, we didn't
31 want anyone to be surprised. We kind of came up here
32 and made this effort to make sure you all knew that
33 this was going to happen and I'm sure that it will at
34 this point. There are -- at least I'm sure Oregon will
35 propose this at this point.
36
37 The public comment period on any
38 regulatory proposal would occur approximately three
39 weeks after that. So the end of August, beginning of
40 September there will be a public comment period. But
41 it would be very helpful and because your regulations
42 are also discussed at that same meeting, it would be
43 very helpful for your representatives, either Federal
44 or State, to know the views of this group when those
45 things are discussed.
46
47 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Dale.
48
49 MR. RABE: Bob, just for clarification.
50 There are actually a couple of steps. I mean this will
105
1 be discussed and a recommendation come out of the
2 Pacific Flyway Council as a normal step.
3
4 MR. TROST: Right.
5
6 MR. RABE: So that becomes a
7 recommendation. So we're really asking for another set
8 of recommendations or commenting from this body which
9 doesn't typically express itself through the Flyway
10 Council discussions that will occur in July.
11
12 MR. TROST: Well said.
13
14 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Molly.
15
16 MS. CHYTHLOOK: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
17 I guess we could, as Board members from here, could go
18 home and encourage our harvesters to increase their
19 harvest with Cackling. It's too bad that this wasn't
20 -- I don't know if -- I guess the population just
21 increased overnight and we weren't prepared for the
22 increase, so we didn't -- we weren't able to encourage
23 our harvesters here in Alaska to increase their
24 harvest. But I guess we can now. We can encourage
25 them to harvest as many Cackling as they possibly can
26 harvest.
27
28 MR. TROST: The trick is that they only
29 exist in any real numbers in Myron's area. They're
30 almost all on the Y-K Delta. Consequently, he's
31 probably got the only group of people that can impact
32 this particular group of birds. And he, as he has
33 already indicated, worked with the folks down south to
34 bring these birds back from almost gone to relatively
35 abundant again. So we want to be careful in trying to
36 fix one problem we don't put ourselves back in another
37 one.
38
39 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Any more discussion
40 on this agenda item.
41
42 (No comments)
43
44 CHAIRMAN NANENG: If not, thanks, Bob,
45 for the information and there will be some comment
46 coming from the Y-K Delta and we'll share that with the
47 Alaska Migratory Bird Co-management Council when we put
48 them together.
49
50 With that, I'd like to be excused and
106
1 request the vice chair to continue the meeting. Like I
2 stated before, we'll email the teleconference number
3 for Friday morning to all of you hopefully by tomorrow
4 afternoon.
5
6 MS. HEPA: Thank you, Myron.
7
8 VICE CHAIR RABE: Thank you, Mr.
9 Chairman.
10
11 CHAIRMAN NANENG: Earlier I made a
12 comment when we were talking about law enforcement, I'm
13 wearing a law enforcement cap and that's the village
14 public safety officer program or organization that's in
15 law enforcement that provides village public safety
16 program in villages. Thanks. We'll see you guys
17 later.
18
19 VICE CHAIR RABE: Okay. Moving on with
20 the agenda then. Are we all prepared then to take up
21 the consent agenda item, which is item D, as it's been
22 re-labeled. Do you have a question, Taqulik?
23
24 MS. HEPA: Yeah. During the approval
25 of the agenda I had pulled the North Slope part for
26 discussion.
27
28 VICE CHAIR RABE: In terms of protocol,
29 I think it would probably be appropriate if we had a
30 motion and acted -- well, actually, I'm not sure. I
31 think in terms of consent agenda -- I need some help
32 from those that are more well-versed in Roberts Rules
33 of Order here, whether or not that requires any type of
34 vote to remove anything from the consent agenda. Do
35 you know, Donna?
36
37 MS. DEWHURST: I don't believe so. I
38 think they could do two separate votes. They could
39 vote on all the other items and
40 then do a separate vote on the North Slope.
41
42 VICE CHAIR RABE: With that and the
43 request to have North Slope Borough removed from the
44 consent agenda, are there any other changes the group
45 would want to make? We're going to have to have a
46 motion on whatever is going to be in that. So prior to
47 a motion, we should probably have a discussion if there
48 are any other changes that are needed at this point.
49 Sandy.
50
107
1 MS. TAHBONE: Mr. Chairman. My
2 understanding is with the consent agenda there is no
3 other changes.
4
5 VICE CHAIR RABE: I mean in terms of
6 request to remove things.
7
8 MS. TAHBONE: Oh, any other request to
9 move other regions, is that what you're saying?
10
11 VICE CHAIR RABE: Yeah. If everything
12 else stays in the consent agenda then. So hearing none
13 I'd entertain a motion.
14
15 MS. HEPA: I'd like to make a motion to
16 approve the consent agenda items excluding the North
17 Slope.
18
19 MR. SHIEDT: I'll second.
20
21 VICE CHAIR RABE: We have a motion and
22 a second. Is there discussion.
23
24 (No comments)
25
26 MS. HEPA: Question.
27
28 VICE CHAIR RABE: Call for the
29 question. Those in favor say aye.
30
31 IN UNISON: Aye.
32
33 VICE CHAIR RABE: Those opposed say
34 nay.
35
36 (No opposing votes)
37
38 VICE CHAIR RABE: Motion passed.
39 Taqulik.
40
41 MS. HEPA: Moving on to the North
42 Slope, with your permission, Mr. Chair, just quickly.
43 Based on the efforts and successes of the steps that
44 have been taken both by the residents of the North
45 Slope and the Fish and Wildlife Service in regards to
46 the Stellar's Eider issue, I'd like to make a motion to
47 adopt the language from the 2008 Alaska Subsistence
48 Spring and Summer Migratory Bird Harvest specific that
49 was reflected in the North Slope Region regulations.
50 That would be my motion.
108
1 MS. TAHBONE: Second, Mr. Chair.
2
3 VICE CHAIR RABE: We have a motion and
4 a second to use the language in the 2008 regulations
5 for the North Slope Borough. Discussion.
6
7 MR. HICKS: Call the question.
8
9 VICE CHAIR RABE: We should probably
10 allow a little time for discussion on it, Joeneal. We
11 already had a hand up before you. Taqulik.
12
13 MS. HEPA: A similar motion was passed
14 last year and I believe the year before. This body has
15 supported this motion. I just really feel that the
16 people of the North Slope have gotten the message.
17 Again, we've taken ownership. It is not a targeted
18 species. Just looking at the regulations from the
19 other regions, to me it's a little bit off balance and
20 I'd like for us to get back to 2008 regulations as they
21 were for the North Slope Region.
22
23 VICE CHAIR RABE: And to clarify the
24 difference in these regulations is simply that
25 regulation did not include shooting hours. Correct?
26
27 MS. HEPA: That is correct.
28
29 VICE CHAIR RABE: Mike, do you have
30 something to add?
31
32 MR. PEDERSON: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
33 In addition to what Taqulik said, the 2008 regulations
34 did not have any of the other conservation measures
35 just for the North Slope. So I just want to make sure
36 that that was understood as well.
37
38 VICE CHAIR RABE: Okay. Any additional
39 discussion.
40
41 MR. HICKS: Question.
42
43 VICE CHAIR RABE: Sandy.
44
45 MS. TAHBONE: All I was going to say is
46 that following this or during this discussion, but I
47 would like -- you know, we took this same action last
48 year and I would request if the Service is going to put
49 forward the same request regarding the regulations the
50 next cycle that they do it through the AMBCC process so
109
1 that it can be vetted and discussed at the regional
2 level because we haven't had that opportunity.
3
4 VICE CHAIR RABE: Does the Service have
5 a comment on that?
6
7 MR. TAYLOR: I do not see any problem
8 with the Service increasing its communication in terms
9 of trying to make sure the AMBCC is aware of what we're
10 proposing and why we're proposing it. So I would be in
11 favor of vetting what ideas we have for conservation
12 measures, whether it be for Yellow-billed Loons or
13 Stellar's Eiders in front of this group. I would
14 agree.
15
16 VICE CHAIR RABE: Okay. I think it's
17 appropriate at this point that I add a few comments on
18 this. The State was asked to provide comments on a
19 number of the issues related to conservation actions on
20 the North Slope and within the State comments the State
21 did, in fact, suggest and question to the Service about
22 the need to have shooting hours on the North Slope
23 Borough and questioned whether or not that was a
24 necessary step in order to achieve the goal of limiting
25 or eliminating the harvest up there. Recognizing that
26 it's not a customary and traditional activity to have a
27 limitation like that.
28
29 We have already provided those comments
30 in a formal way to the Service as our view of -- a form
31 of question and potentially concern of an unnecessary
32 limitation in the methods and means used in the
33 harvest. Recognizing, of course, the goal, which is to
34 eliminate the harvest of those threatened species, the
35 Stellar's Eider particularly. So I just wanted to put
36 that on the record.
37
38 Given the fact that this, I suspect, is
39 not going to be a unanimous vote, I think we're going
40 to have to go to the representative votes from the
41 Native and I'm not sure who's representing the Native.
42 Do we need to have a caucus on this? By the bylaws, we
43 have three votes on the Council; one for the State, one
44 for the Service and one for all of the regional Native
45 groups. So who is going to be representing that vote?
46
47 MS. TAHBONE: I believe the next one we
48 have chosen in line would be Joeneal. He would be the
49 voice of our.....
50
110
1 VICE CHAIR RABE: The voice of the
2 group on this issue?
3
4 MS. TAHBONE: Correct.
5
6 VICE CHAIR RABE: So his vote is the
7 vote that the group will abide by?
8
9 MS. HEPA: Yeah.
10
11 VICE CHAIR RABE: Ida.
12
13 MS. HILDEBRAND: Mr. Chairman. For you
14 information, that was part of the Native caucus this
15 morning, that Joeneal was selected in the absence of
16 Myron.
17
18 VICE CHAIR RABE: Thank you. Taqulik.
19
20 MS. HEPA: I'd just like to take the
21 time to thank the State for their comments that they
22 did provide. Taking a broader view of this, you know,
23 the good thing about it is that we are very well aware
24 of the conservation concern of Stellar's Eiders.
25 Whether the regulation is as it is or if it goes back
26 to the 2008, the local residents of the North Slope
27 want to continue with the outreach.
28
29 For example, if it happens to be a
30 nesting year this year, we want to make extra efforts
31 to talk about how we could protect the birds in their
32 nests with the community, the children and whatnot. So
33 that's the good part of it and that should be reflected
34 in how we vote on these regulations because there are
35 many conservation measures that are happening and will
36 continue to happen on the North Slope.
37
38 VICE CHAIR RABE: Other comments. Are
39 we ready to call the question.
40
41 MS. HEPA: Question.
42
43 VICE CHAIR RABE: We have called the
44 question. We'll do this as a roll call vote. We'll
45 start with the Native regional caucus. Joeneal.
46
47 MR. HICKS: Yea.
48
49 VICE CHAIR RABE: The State votes yes.
50
111
1 MR. TAYLOR: Fish and Wildlife Service
2 votes no.
3
4 VICE CHAIR RABE: The motion passes
5 then. So the recommendation going forward will be to
6 have the regulations for the North Slope Borough to be
7 those that were in force in 2008. Having said that
8 yet, even Doug yesterday in explaining the process, I
9 think everybody needs to recognize that there are other
10 steps and there are other decision-making elements in
11 this process that occur at another point in time.
12
13 So as long as everybody realizes what
14 the value of the vote is at this point in time and the
15 possibility that it will not go through the entire
16 process with this recommendation holding up.
17
18 Sandy.
19
20 MS. TAHBONE: Just one remark. The
21 regulation itself, you know, is it a good regulation or
22 a bad regulation as far as conservation? If the intent
23 is a conservation effort, I don't believe that's the
24 outcome or the -- given the I want to say frustration
25 levels of Alaska Natives across the state when it comes
26 to developing regulations and the impact of regulations
27 and whether or not in this instances a conservation
28 regulation.
29
30 Does it, in fact -- will the outcome be
31 conservation or will it actually harm and I think that
32 really needs to be something that the Service really
33 needs to looks at when they are developing these types.
34 They really need to pull the Native community in when
35 they're considering these types of regulations because
36 it's the Native community that needs to stand behind
37 them.
38
39 VICE CHAIR RABE: Thank you. With that
40 then, we have
41 finished the new business. That was the extent of it.
42 Are we prepared to go on? Let's enter into other
43 business then. The first item, item A, is Donna and
44 we're going to talk about the 2010 grant applications.
45
46 MS. DEWHURST: I'll be brief. The
47 points to look at are kind of the yellow highlighted
48 aspects under FY10. We have two groups, North Slope
49 and CRRC, that are pending needing my financial forms
50 done or done correctly or whatever.
112
1 The one thing I've observed since I've
2 been managing these grants for four or five years is we
3 have a really high turnover in both the financial folks
4 in the Native organizations and we have a high turnover
5 of the contracting folks on our end and it makes it
6 real interesting because with the high turnover
7 everybody is learning every year. Everybody has to
8 have a lot of patience in this. Molly has dealt with
9 this quite a bit with her group.
10
11 I kind of try to ride the middle ground
12 and try to liaison between the contracting office and
13 the Native groups, but you've just got to hang on there
14 and try to cooperate with us. As I say those two
15 groups, North Slope and CRRC, are just pending getting
16 the correct financial forms filled out and they'll be
17 done.
18
19 Maniilaq, I'm happy to say, we have
20 Enoch back and hopefully I can get all the package back
21 to him and he can carry it back and maybe we'll get
22 Maniilaq to sign the grant this year, which would be
23 awesome, because they haven't signed in quite a few
24 years. Basically since Enoch left they haven't signed.
25 So hopefully we can get those guys back on board as our
26 partner.
27
28 So then that leaves Southeast. The
29 Southeast Alaska Intertribal Fish and Wildlife
30 Commission has requested to not be a partner anymore.
31 They are suggesting we go back to the original
32 partners, which was Tlingit-Haida, CCTHITA. I'm trying
33 to remember what all it stood for. But its basically
34 the Tlingit-Haida group, which is the parent group of
35 this group. That was back when Gordon was the rep.
36 Some of you that have been around long enough remember
37 Gordon. He would resume being the rep.
38
39 In order for us to do that though, we
40 have to go through the process -- we have to go through
41 a formal process through contracting to get a new
42 representative. So I think we need a vote from the
43 Council to say that you would like us to pursue getting
44 a new representative for Southeast. Chances are it
45 will be CCTHITA, but I can't guarantee that 100 percent
46 because we do have to put it out to competition, but we
47 can write the specs tight enough that nobody else is
48 going to get it, which would be my intent. But we do
49 have to put it out to bid.
50
113
1 It's my understanding Gordon and that
2 organization is very interested in getting it back, but
3 we do need some sort of a motion and a vote from you
4 guys that basically tells staff that you would like us
5 to pursue getting a new partner for that region because
6 right now we don't have a partner. So that would be
7 the main action on the grants unless anybody has any
8 other questions.
9
10 VICE CHAIR RABE: Ida.
11
12 MS. HILDEBRAND: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
13 Did Southeast say
14 why they didn't want to be a partner anymore or why
15 they're recommending someone else?
16
17 MS. DEWHURST: I got the impression
18 that the reason they originally wanted to be a partner
19 was the Bald Eagle issue a few years back and when that
20 got resolved they didn't really have any hot issues
21 they were interested in pursuing and their group is
22 much smaller than the parent organization and they were
23 having problems with the administrative aspects of the
24 grant. So that was why I think they're suggesting
25 giving the grant back to the parent organization is my
26 understanding.
27
28 VICE CHAIR RABE: Sandy.
29
30 MS. TAHBONE: Wouldn't one of our
31 options be to change our
32 bylaws?
33
34 MS. DEWHURST: It's a contracting issue
35 and I've explored this heavily and with the new
36 contracting laws. All of the other groups were
37 grandfathered in and that's why you get your grants
38 non-competitively. Any time at this point that we
39 change groups -- and it isn't a bylaws thing, it's a
40 contracting regulation that any time we change groups
41 for financial assistance it has to go out to
42 competition.
43
44 I have been very much assured by them
45 that we can write the specs very tightly. It would be
46 very difficult for anybody else to compete. But we
47 still have to go through the formal process of
48 announcing it on the internet and doing a notice and
49 all that and then CCTHITA would have to put in a
50 proposal.
114
1 Once they get it, I don't believe they
2 have to compete again. I think once they get it
3 they'll have it, but initially we would have to put it
4 out to a process. Believe me, I've looked at every
5 possible way to get around this and been told no. It's
6 the process that any time from here on out that we
7 change groups.
8
9 VICE CHAIR RABE: Follow up, Sandy.
10
11 MS. TAHBONE: I don't know if we need a
12 joke now, but shouldn't we get a solicitor's opinion?
13 Within our membership it reads the region and the
14 administrative organizations -- I mean it just seems to
15 me -- do you have a written response back from
16 contracting or.....
17
18 MS. DEWHURST: Yeah. I don't have it
19 with me, but there is an actual regulation that was
20 passed a few years ago that says any time you're
21 changing the grantees that it has to be competitive.
22 You guys are one of the few in the nation that are not
23 competitive anymore. There were -- believe me, a few
24 years ago there was a real movement afoot to not let
25 you not be competitive and we fought for it because we
26 did publish -- thank goodness we published in the
27 Federal Regulations way back when that these would be
28 our partners. So anybody listed there could be
29 partners as long as they maintained their partnership.
30
31 Like Maniilaq wouldn't have to compete
32 because they technically have maintained their
33 partnership. We haven't put it out to anybody else.
34 In this case, we switched partners and we'd be going
35 back and I've been told there's no other option.
36 Believe me. This is going to be a lot of work for me.
37 I'd rather not do it, but I've been told there's no
38 other option.
39
40 MS. TAHBONE: I would like to see that
41 in writing, that response to the.....
42
43 MS. DEWHURST: I can get it to you.
44 It's a regulation.
45
46 VICE CHAIR RABE: Molly, did you have a
47 question?
48
49 MS. CHYTHLOOK: My understanding is
50 that there was an original group that had this and then
115
1 this group took it over, now the original wants it back
2 or is willing to take it back. So we have to go
3 through all this process just to do that. I guess if
4 the original group that had it before is willing to
5 take it, then the process -- we'll have to go through
6 the process. Unless we have any more discussion, I'd
7 like to make a motion to have you go through the
8 process to get this.
9
10 MS. DEWHURST: I anticipate the process
11 would take three to four months. So if we got started
12 fairly soon, we could potentially have them on board
13 for next year, for next fiscal year.
14
15 MS. CHYTHLOOK: And that's my motion.
16
17 MR. DEVINE: Second that motion.
18
19 VICE CHAIR RABE: We have a motion and
20 a second to pursue a change in partners then for
21 Southeast. Do we have any discussion.
22
23 MS. TAHBONE: Under discussion, Mr.
24 Chairman.
25
26 VICE CHAIR RABE: Yes.
27
28 MS. TAHBONE: I'd like to see some kind
29 of communication that's their wishes in either a
30 resolution or something from them and as well as
31 something from the receiving -- the organization that's
32 going to be accepting the responsibility.
33
34 MS. DEWHURST: They verbally did it
35 like three meetings ago and the formal action of them
36 denying it was -- we had to actually send them out the
37 package this year officially and they sent it back to
38 us officially denying, that they didn't want to be
39 partners anymore. There was no letter with it. They
40 just returned it and said this is why we're returning
41 it. So we got the whole packet back saying we're not
42 interested. As far as CCTHITA saying they want it, the
43 way they would want it is they have to write a proposal
44 saying we're interested in it and this is what we
45 propose to do.
46
47 VICE CHAIR RABE: Have we received such
48 a letter?
49
50 MS. DEWHURST: No, because we haven't
116
1 approached them yet. I mean they have told me verbally
2 they're interested, but we haven't officially, in
3 writing, approached them yet.
4
5 VICE CHAIR RABE: But they would do
6 that in response to a contract opportunity.
7
8 MS. DEWHURST: Correct.
9
10 VICE CHAIR RABE: Any other discussion.
11
12 (No comments)
13
14 VICE CHAIR RABE: Are we ready for a
15 vote?
16
17 MR. HICKS: Question.
18
19 VICE CHAIR RABE: Called the question.
20 Verbal support, everybody say aye.
21
22 IN UNISON: Aye.
23
24 VICE CHAIR RABE: Any opposed say nay.
25
26 (No opposing votes)
27
28 VICE CHAIR RABE: Motion passes. Thank
29 you, Donna.
30
31 MS. TAHBONE: Before you leave. So you
32 have that balance of unexpended funds for '09. Those
33 are to be used in FY10?
34
35 MS. DEWHURST: No, those are already
36 spent. As soon as we get unspent funds, they disappear
37 really quickly. We are very
38 much in the red this year, so they disappeared as
39 quickly as they appeared.
40
41 MS. TAHBONE: So we should have
42 reallocated and then a zero balance. I thought we had
43 requested the budget for AMBCC before.
44
45 MS. DEWHURST: (Away from microphone)
46 prepared it. He had to leave really suddenly.
47
48 MS. TAHBONE: And then one more
49 question, Donna. So the only other possible is the
50 14,000 regarding the Southeast, correct?
117
1 MS. DEWHURST: As far as the money?
2
3 MS. TAHBONE: Yeah.
4
5 MS. DEWHURST: In all honestly, I don't
6 even think that money is available this year. I think
7 it's already gone. If we got a new partner, it's going
8 to take three to four months, so that money we'd have
9 to worry about it for allocating it for next year.
10
11 MS. TAHBONE: I'm working under the
12 action that this Council took regarding those
13 agreements that aren't in place. After X amount of
14 days those funds would be made available to the rest of
15 the partners. So you're saying that $14,000 was there
16 but it's not there anymore? I'm assuming that would
17 have gone back into the pool.
18
19 MS. DEWHURST: That you would
20 have to ask the executive director. On my end of it,
21 it was de-obligated, which means we obligated for the
22 grant. When the grantee doesn't sign, it gets pulled
23 back off of that. The obligation is saying we're going
24 to use this money for this. When that doesn't happen,
25 we just pull it back. After what happens after that is
26 not my responsibility.
27
28 MS. TAHBONE: Mr. Chairman. I'd like
29 to make a request to the executive director to provide
30 us with a financial report for our '09 budget
31 expenditures that are final.
32
33 VICE CHAIR RABE: At what timeframe?
34 This meeting, next meeting?
35
36 MS. TAHBONE: No, I would say at least
37 by the next meeting.
38
39 MS. HEPA: Second.
40
41 VICE CHAIR RABE: In the form of a
42 motion?
43
44 MS. TAHBONE: Motion.
45
46 VICE CHAIR RABE: We have a motion and
47 a second to have a financial report at our next meeting
48 on the use of the funds for the grants then. Do we
49 have a discussion on the motion. Sandy.
50
118
1 MS. TAHBONE: I know we were short.
2 All our positions weren't filled and I just have a real
3 worry and I'm not sure if we should maybe amend that to
4 include what our staff was working on. I mean I'm
5 really -- and continue to be concerned because we have
6 business of this Council that is not being addressed
7 and our staff seem to be really heavily involved in the
8 process of getting our recommendations of regulations
9 into regulations, which I'm not sure if that's even a
10 valid responsibility of AMBCC if that's not a Service
11 responsibility. Our staff seems to be spending a lot
12 of time making sure that the regs get published. So
13 maybe I'm not sure if we need to amende that motion.
14
15 VICE CHAIR RABE: I guess it's not
16 entirely clear to me what you're asking for as a change
17 at this point.
18
19 MS. TAHBONE: What I'm wanting to know
20 is we have a budget. We have our AMBCC budget. Within
21 that we have staff positions and clearly we have not
22 been at 100 percent staffing, so there should be some
23 savings and where are those savings being shifted to.
24
25 The other question I have is the staff
26 that we do have, what percentage of their time are they
27 working on what I'm thinking are Service
28 responsibilities versus AMBCC responsibilities. So I'm
29 not sure if that's another request that needs to be
30 made.
31
32 VICE CHAIR RABE: Okay. If there's
33 anybody in the Service that wants to take a stab at
34 this. I have vague recall of Doug talking about this
35 in previous meetings. Of course, I haven't been to
36 enough of the meetings to have a long history of this,
37 but as I recall part of the answer to this is related
38 to the fact of where the AMBCC budget comes from within
39 the broader Service budget and that it's not a
40 dedicated.
41
42 Now if there's more to it than that,
43 I'll leave it up to the Service folks to give
44 additional details. But I think it's fair to ask for
45 an accounting, which the motion currently does, and
46 then it may be worthwhile to have follow-up questions
47 at that point in time relative to the autonomy of
48 funding and then alternative uses for quote/unquote
49 funds that had initially been set aside and that kind
50 of thing.
119
1 Donna, do you have additional things?
2
3 MS. DEWHURST: No, I was just going to
4 back up what you say. A lot of that is Doug's
5 discretion, not even Fred's, as far as when money frees
6 up how it's spent. He has the master pot of money and
7 we have a small chunk of that or a chunk of that. Any
8 time money gets freed up, whether it's by us or by Eric
9 and Russ's shop or whatever, Doug has the ultimate say
10 as to how to re-allocate money. Sometimes we have
11 control, sometimes we don't, but that's the master of
12 the pot of money.
13
14 As far as staffing, Sandy, staffing has
15 changed in the past couple of years as far as what we
16 do mainly because we went from three people plus Fred
17 down to me and Fred. So if you did a study and looked
18 at how I spent my time three years ago and how I spend
19 my time now, it would be very different just because
20 I'm trying to cover all those positions until we start
21 backfilling.
22
23 VICE CHAIR RABE: Any further
24 discussion on the motion to have an accounting of
25 expenditures.
26
27 MS. HEPA: Call for question.
28
29 VICE CHAIR RABE: We have a call for
30 the question. All those in favor say aye.
31
32 IN UNISON: Aye.
33
34 VICE CHAIR RABE: All those opposed
35 nay.
36
37 (No opposing votes)
38
39 VICE CHAIR RABE: The motion is
40 carried. I'm sure the minutes will show that and I
41 trust that staff will make a note so that at our next
42 meeting they're prepared to do that.
43
44 I'm looking at the clock. It's 20
45 after. Our next agenda item is the Harvest Survey
46 Plans for 2010. Liliana, do you have a sense of --
47 I've been part of this before and I know that these can
48 get to be longer discussions. Does the Council have
49 the will to see that one through if we get started or
50 do we call it a night and start fresh in the morning.
120
1 The body language is suggesting that it
2 would be advantageous for us to call it a night. So I
3 am officially adjourning the meeting and Eric can bang
4 the gavel if he wants. We're adjourned for tonight and
5 we will reconvene at 9:00 o'clock tomorrow morning to
6 finish our agenda then.
7
8 Thank you all.
9
10 (Off record)
11
12 (PROCEEDINGS TO BE CONTINUED)
121
1 C E R T I F I C A T E
2
3 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA )
4 )ss.
5 STATE OF ALASKA )
6
7 I, Salena A. Hile, Notary Public in and
8 for the state of Alaska and reporter for Computer
9 Matrix Court Reporters, LLC, do hereby certify:
10
11 THAT the foregoing pages numbered 02
12 through 121 contain a full, true and correct Transcript
13 of the ALASKA MIGRATORY BIRD CO-MANAGEMENT COUNCIL FALL
14 MEETING taken electronically by Computer Matrix Court
15 Reporters on the 21st day of April 2010, at Anchorage,
16 Alaska;
17
18 THAT the transcript is a true and
19 correct transcript requested to be transcribed and
20 thereafter transcribed by under my direction and
21 reduced to print to the best of our knowledge and
22 ability;
23
24 THAT I am not an employee, attorney, or
25 party interested in any way in this action.
26
27 DATED at Anchorage, Alaska, this 12th
28 day of May 2010.
29
30
31
32 _______________________________
33 Salena A. Hile
34 Notary Public, State of Alaska
35 My Commission Expires: 9/16/2010