1 Seward Peninsula Federal Subsistence 2 Regional
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1 SEWARD PENINSULA FEDERAL SUBSISTENCE 2 REGIONAL ADVISORY COUNCIL MEETING 3 4 PUBLIC MEETING 5 6 7 VOLUME II 8 9 Aurora Inn 10 Nome, Alaska 11 October 4, 2012 12 9:00 a.m. 13 14 Members Present: 15 16 Louis Green, Chairman 17 Reggie Barr 18 Peter Buck 19 Fred Eningowuk 20 Tom Gray 21 Elmer Seetot 22 Timothy Smith 23 24 25 Regional Council Coordinator - Alex Nick 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 Recorded and transcribed by: 43 44 Computer Matrix Court Reporters, LLC 45 135 Christensen Drive, Suite 2 46 Anchorage, AK 99501 47 907-243-0668/907-227-5312 48 [email protected] 1 P R O C E E D I N G S 2 3 (Nome, Alaska - 10/4/2012) 4 5 (On record) 6 7 CHAIRMAN GREEN: We're going to call 8 this meeting to order, the 4th of October, and we're 9 getting some charts and stuff handed around here the 10 table about muskox concerns here. Mr. Gorn is going to 11 come to the table and we're going to give him the 12 floor. 13 14 MR. NICK: Mr. Chair. 15 16 CHAIRMAN GREEN: Alex, go ahead. 17 18 MR. NICK: I would like to make a 19 couple of reminders to the Council. I handed out your 20 electronic ticket receipt, which is an old one for 21 those of you who made changes to your travel. There's 22 a couple of them who made changes -- who requested to 23 change their travel back to the village. If you need 24 to make travel changes, according to the policy, we are 25 not to make our own changes, you need to contact me or 26 OSM. What I did was I jotted down OSM toll free number 27 and my contact numbers. Make sure when you travel -- 28 for weather factors, you know, we can't do anything 29 about that so if you need to make changes due to 30 weather you need to contact our office in Anchorage or 31 me so that we could change your itinerary on your 32 return trip. 33 34 What I also need, as soon as you get 35 back to your villages, your taxi receipts, make sure 36 you get your taxi receipts and either fax or email them 37 to me, if you have a scanner. It would be good, you 38 know, if you sent those to me within a couple days, 39 like following Monday when you return to your village. 40 41 I talked to hotel manager yesterday 42 that, if necessary, you will be authorized to stay 43 after the meeting, check into the airline and if you 44 can't make it out you will be authorized to stay at the 45 hotel for additional day or two, depending on what the 46 weather is doing. 47 48 But if you make changes, like there's a 49 couple of you that made changes to return later, a day 50 later or a couple days later, your per diem will end on 147 1 the day and time when you're supposed to arrive at 2 home. That will change, you know, if there's a weather 3 factor, but if you make changes and say that you're 4 going to be on your own for maybe a day or two and we 5 tell our travel staff in Anchorage then your per diem 6 will end on the day and time you're supposed to reach 7 home. 8 9 Any questions. 10 11 (No comments) 12 13 MR. NICK: Quyana. 14 15 CHAIRMAN GREEN: Thank you, Alex. 16 Well, Mr. Gorn, you have the floor. 17 18 MR. ADKISSON: Mr. Chair. 19 20 CHAIRMAN GREEN: Oh, I'm sorry. 21 22 MR. ADKISSON: Ken Adkisson, National 23 Park Service. I mean since this is basically a Federal 24 program, it might be useful to kind of structure this 25 discussion or presentation, if I could make a couple 26 brief introductory remarks to kind of set the stage and 27 then turn it over to Tony to go into all of the biology 28 and the underlying things, and then he can also cover 29 how that affected the State hunt and, then, finally, I 30 can come back and briefly discuss how we're approaching 31 the Federal hunt in relation to all of that, if that 32 works for you. 33 34 CHAIRMAN GREEN: It works good. 35 36 MR. ADKISSON: Excellent. 37 38 Mr. Chair. Council members. Let me 39 just start out by referring you to the handout that you 40 were provided called the 2012/2013 subsistence muskox 41 hunts on the Seward Peninsula. That's the reality 42 right now, that's where we're at in the current hunt 43 year. So that's a fact. And that's a starting point. 44 45 The points I would make about that is, 46 I've also handed out a map that refers to the 2008 47 situation that led to the Tier I -- creating the large 48 numbers of areas under Tier I, and that will show you 49 the harvest quotas for each of those hunt areas, as 50 well as the up to drawing quotas that we had under the 148 1 Tier I system. So what I'd like to say about that is 2 if you look at 2008, that's really the high water mark, 3 so to speak, of population and opportunity. And when 4 you look at the 2012 and 2013 hunt year, you can see 5 there are very substantial changes. One, there's no 6 more cow hunt. There is no open cow season any longer. 7 Two, the allowable harvest quotas have been reduced 8 substantially in most areas. There, in most cases, are 9 no more Tier I hunts except 22E, all the rest of the 10 hunt areas have reverted to Tier II under State 11 management. So substantial changes. 12 13 Now, I think unless there are questions 14 right now, I think now would be a good time to turn it 15 over to Tony and let him start leading into the biology 16 that, you know, how we got to where we are today. 17 18 MR. GRAY: Mr. Chairman. 19 20 CHAIRMAN GREEN: Go ahead. 21 22 MR. GRAY: Could I ask him to give a 23 quick summary of why the substantial changes from the 24 Park Service point of view, before the biology. 25 26 CHAIRMAN GREEN: Ken. 27 28 MR. ADKISSON: I could do that, yes, 29 Mr. Chair. 30 31 MR. GRAY: Thank you. 32 33 MR. ADKISSON: I also handed out a 34 flier that we like distributed as a sample that we 35 distributed in 22E related to the Federal hunt. If you 36 look down there you can see, for example, very briefly, 37 the reduction in allowable harvest due to the decline 38 of almost 50 percent of the muskoxen population in GMU 39 22E between 2010 and 2012, as well as declines in the 40 bull/cow ratio and in recruitment. And while the 41 individual hunt areas may differ, and Tony will get 42 into this perhaps, basically overall on the Seward 43 Penn, between 2010 2012 there's been a significant 44 reduction in population and many of the hunt areas are 45 experiencing these declines in recruitment and bull/cow 46 ratios. 47 48 So that's it in a nutshell and Tony can 49 provide you all the details. 50 149 1 MR. GRAY: Thank you. 2 3 MR. ADKISSON: I think. 4 5 CHAIRMAN GREEN: Okay, thank you, Ken. 6 7 Tony, you're up. 8 9 MR. GORN: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I 10 don't know, maybe if I had fancy slides on the wall, 11 the name of the talk that we're going to have right now 12 would be lessons learned, because I think over the last 13 several years we're learning more about muskox 14 populations than any other species that we manage in 15 Unit 22. 16 17 One of the things that we've learned, 18 and I need to take a moment to correct my colleague to 19 the left of me, we cannot be talking about a subunit 20 based muskox population, they don't work that way. The 21 Unit 22E muskox population did not decrease 50 percent, 22 you know, we know these animals move incredible 23 distances across the Seward Peninsula. Now, at the end 24 of the day we got to manage hunts somehow, and what 25 we're most familiar with is using subunits as hunt 26 areas because we need geographic parameters to 27 administer these hunts so we do, often times, talk 28 about the number of animals present in a certain area 29 but I just want to make sure that everybody understands 30 we don't have separate populations of muskox on the 31 Seward Peninsula. 32 33 With that said I'll just quickly let 34 you know what we do at Fish and Game in our muskox S&I 35 program. First of all, we work cooperatively with all 36 the Federal agencies. It's really a great working 37 relationship between the Department of Fish and Game, 38 the Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, US Fish 39 and Wildlife Service, and I hope I didn't forget 40 anybody, and every two years we estimate the 41 population.