It's turning on the press, you folks have met Chris before. What I'm hoping from the board tonight after the presentation is that the department gets some direction on what you would like us to do. Either we can do nothing, we can look at the purgeware rule, but we need that direction from you if we decide to pursue any things for you. You've got our recommendations on what we support, what we oppose already, Chris will talk in more detail. And then depending on your direction, if you have direction where you want the board to do some action on the current purgeware rule to amend it, then we will regroup internally and try to drop the language working with our current law enforcement people and others. The last thing we want to have is changing one of our existing rules and not the law to be enforceable or pragmatic from the management standpoint. So, and Mark, let me just ask very quickly, is that if that comes to pass when you pass those recommendations, there will be additional public meetings, hearings, and comment options. Thanks for mentioning that, Lois. I think sometimes for many people I think here tonight, this is probably the first time we've even been to a Fish and Wildlife Board meeting that we've had and I can say that we're pretty certain because I've been coming over about six years and haven't missed too many, but these are working meetings of the board that they hold and they rely on the product for the data and the science. Anybody can petition the board through the petition process and in the ACA, you can sign back right away or take a load or go back to the department for more information to do that. In any comments the department gets that we feel is relating to a topic that the board still has to pass it on to the board. But if the board decides to take action at any time, then it opens up, Lois is talking about as a formal public process that we have to follow by law to do that. And the number of hearings that we have, where we have that, is usually dependent on the board. Sometimes it depends on the topic or the issue at the end of it as well. So, and why do we need to brought that up, Lois? So, you know, in knowing that, everything we do is only with being said that we hold in our own department or we want to try to get people an opportunity to speak if they want to, that's pertinent to the subject. There should be the sign up sheet that's still going around, does that consider if anybody's not on it? So, in fact, if you want to actually speak tonight, I think we've got that for you, Lois. Okay, Chris, most recent meetings of the truth is going on at Chris Press here, so. Chris, nice work. Chris, thank you so much. And you're doing intelligence for the press also, okay. Let's get Chris a warm welcome. Hello, and that. So, I think we don't have as I was standing there listening to Mark's introduction, that the title on this is quite awful, and I apologize for that.  I don't too base about it, it's what it is. This is, there's a lot of substance here. So, it's what it is. And also, sitting here, as we all did just a little while ago watching the video that was cycling or actually just played at the beginning of the meeting, kind of dawned on me as well, that I feel like the most victims of our own success to some degree here. When you look at the tremendous work that has been done by this board, not these individuals per se, but board, system, department, looking at where we have been historically and where we have come into the present, it really is remarkable, the amount of work that's been accomplished and the bounty of these resources that we are involved in. It's a privilege to be a part of this process. It's humbling, it's a privilege on the last. And, you know, I think in saying that we are a victim of our own success, and I have to explain it honestly, one of the things that we do, making sure we have a lot of wildlife and making sure that people have opportunities to enjoy that wildlife and whatever fashion it can be, obviously with limitations, but hunting and fishing and trapping and wildlife watching and so on and so forth. We have to instill appreciation of these wildlife resources for everybody out there. And I think this turnout, and I have a suspicion that turnout's to come and actually reinforce that that isn't the back of the case. We've been successful with that. And so why is that a primary victim? Well, the problem is that the public appreciates these resources in a whole host of ways. The, I don't really mean to even say this, I think we all understand it, but it's all over the board. And that is the problem. That is what makes this so challenging, because everyone has such deep-moving feelings, convictions, passions for these resources. So that is really the problem that I've been challenged with, is trying to work our way through this process to come to some decision and respect these petition items. That makes sense. And that takes in to account everyone's input. And then also when I was watching the introduction here, I realized, you know, this is the appropriate venue, not physically here, but the system, the process that we have, the board, the fish and wildlife department, the public, the constituents that we traditionally reach out to, these issues in particular. It is a process. We look at the tremendous successes that we've driven to today, and it's powerful. This is the body and process that makes the most sense. It would be irresponsible, I think, for us to not actually address these in this manner using this process. And just a word about my approach, our approach specifically. Given all the challenges and the breadth of opinion and the backdrop of the conversations that are going on behind all of this, there is a process by which an approach to which we are trying to really do our due diligence to the mission of the department and I think to each and everyone's individual missions as they relate to the greater conservationists. You know, and I think through Mark's introduction of the various people that have been involved in law enforcement, to biostatisticians, to, you know, senior, not age-wise, just as a very actual biologist that have been in the trenches on all these issues. And then the depth of the degree to which we've looked at all this data, collected it, and continue to move that forward. This isn't an illusion, but I'm too present. I don't know if we can really criticize the approach that we've had. It's been very logical and thorough as I've been able to drive with all the issues that we're dealing with, and I think it's appropriate. I'm glad I'm on. Those who know me know that I came to these rents and I apologize. We have a lot to cover. I will say one more thing before we jump in. Sorry, how much time do we have? Four hours. The other thing too, if it hasn't come up, and I want to talk about it loud and clear, at least from my perspective right here right now, is that I have not been able to answer every email, both pro or con in this company, or answer every phone call, or actually have an answer for any of these things that have come my way. It's just physically impossible for me to be able to engage in the activity of doing what I need to do to get to these conclusions, to do this process. I can't possibly answer all the answer that has resulted in it. That does not mean that I don't listen in here. I go through and I open every email that has come into my room. I'm sure I'll test it with those that have seen my email down. I at least read through particularly those that have taken the time to write something in that email other than a cookie stamp, cut or cut and paste. I mean, I'll let you know that even if people haven't taken that time, I have digested it and it has been a part of this process of working. And I care about people's opinions. I understand that at the end of the day there will be a decision. And at the end of the day, there will be some group, some individual that will be hurt by this decision, not physically necessary, but certainly emotionally hurt. And regardless of which way this goes. And that does bother me. Okay, so without further ado. One of the first things I wanna just address right off the top of this, and Christopher mentioned it in his introduction, is that of the wildlife action plan, the status of species of greatest conservation need. And the reason why I put this up, I mean, there's been a lot of different things that have been led against this petition. And this one, I think very personal because I think it's currently misuse of the intent of this particular document. But I was a principle player in its development. I mean, the listing of a lot or a lot of that in the wildlife action plan came off of my desk. And so when I received an email, someone says, you should not do this because don't you know? There are species of various conservation needs. It's like, well, actually I do. And I also understand why there are species of various conservation needs. So first, you have to understand what this document is. It is a tool by which to leverage money for applying resources to the species that we have discernible threats for or gaps of knowledge for. It is to address things that we can predict or things we need to be able to understand. It was a mechanism of funding. It's not the status of its abundance. There are host of species on the list. In fact, 34 for mammals, to count any of us. And some of them are harvested. Like on-cat, like otter, like grous, snowshoe hair. A lot of them are common, but there are discernible threats for them. It's not the harvest. It's not wrapped in a long-term persistence in fact. When you look at on-cat otter specifically, as well as others, the information we get from the harvest of on-cat otter and state is what ended up putting those upon the list in part or for other issues. We collect all the on-cat otter and state, which is a boom of opportunity for a data collection. And we engage our on-cat otter and state and there are too many to name, but there have been many. Green Mountain College, Women's State University, oh, I named that one. All of them, UNH, a lot of different research has come out of this. And through that research, we have identified the discernible threats. Genetic threats, buried in a landscape through genetic analysis, well, the water comes out of the, I just combined those two species. Of the water, I see. With the on-cat genetic analysis. With the on-er, we actually use that sample that we get to have to test for the bio-accumulation of heavy metals and tissues, which we found to water on the 20th of a sample. This is a pilot study and maybe we'll do some more of this, but the opportunity exists to use that as a measure of the landscape toxicity or trends in changes of these things. That is power for us to be able to understand these things. Disease, surveillance, and understanding disease, epigenetics, the way our genes or the animals' genes are manifested in their behaviors. The list goes on and on. So again, hardness is not the reason why these species are on the list. It's in part the information we've gathered from that data collected that led us to understand that they need to be on the list. Chris? Yes. Can you just add that the listing of projects on the wildlife action plan allowed us to provide state wildlife grant funds? As soon as I had that study, that we would not have been able to afford if it hadn't been listed as a state-of-the-art conservation list. And actually, that stemmed from conversations with travelers and hunters of wildlife that led us to what we thought at the conclusion at that time that there were certain habitats in the state that were critical, rocky legends, rocky uprocks, certain wetlands, and that, so we got the information from these folks and then have all of the 2005 action plan and then actually have the stuff which helped us to understand more how the wildlife's utilized our landscape. And there are other examples of that, too. So we'll jump into, I think it's probably the easiest of the three issues that we're gonna look at here tonight. There's not a lot to say about it and, you know, it is wrong to let it speak for itself. I know that most of you probably understand this program called the Traffits, but I need to start there for those that don't. This is a muskrat, colony trapper, cage trapper. Trappers make them, colony.  It's not a strain load or anything. It drops back down and the animal's captured in the trap. They are actually quite selective because you can control this, the diameter, the opening. So that allows for selectivity of what can fit in the back. This is the way they're typically deployed. You can see there's another measure of selectivity where you deploy it, where you're, you know you've got your target species moving through. They are set under water.  The animals that get into this do. Muskrat get into this ground in that trap. Whole issue that we're trying to solve here really is a result of the, I'll say it, our own screw up. But it's, to understand the screw up, when you look at the rules that regulate traffic in the state. They are complex and they are nuanced and they are manual. Regulated traffic is the most regulated activity that the department oversees in the state. So when we give in to a rule to make a change, which we do regularly, to update the rules, depending on the issue, the drawer, or modernize the language or what happens. When we get in there, there's often a trickle down effect where we made a change for a good measure, but we did not foresee what might happen when we, this is an example that we had. This is the historical rule language prior to 2008. And you'll note, it does not distinguish any type of trap. Just that traps set under water or ice, during the other season, must be checked every 72 hours. So in this rule, these cage traps, the colony cage traps, were allowed a 72 hour check. That is the way that then up until 2008. At that point, 2008, there were a number of changes that transpired there. One of them was the recognition that football traps are different. Football trap on the water is not necessarily the killed type of trap. Generally it is the way it's set, but it does not have to be.  So there was a movement, amongst other things, that took place then, underlated to this, to separate that out and to make a distinction that volume of the traps, which was a killed trap, regardless of where it's set in water or otherwise. But body traps in the water or football traps or body traps under the ice, because a football trap under the ice is definitely the killed trap. So there was this movement to separate those up. This 72 hour check that we're talking about is for killed type of traps, set in a quiet environment. That's what it's for. Cage traps didn't end up in there. We separated them up and defined the body-ripping traps, the football traps, cage traps, got left off the list, and inadvertently stayed. Then this, I think, was one of the first things that I got involved in, in a regulatory manner, when I got involved in this position. And again, there was a whole other backdrop of other things we were trying to address, but I tried to get this remedy at that point, 2013. And I got closer, but I didn't quite get it. So again, body-ripping traps in the water or under the ice were over cage traps under the ice, but it did not address these cage traps under the water or fit into the killed type traps. In admission, because being a football guide on the football radio, I stole a photo from your website and I apologize for that. I wanted a photo of a muskrat trap, and I typed in to do what I think we all do, and we got a muskrat trap right here. And the muskrat trap was in the football radio site, and I listened to it. I just got on the script of them all, the title of the program was muskrat trap, and aired it in March or sometime, I forget exactly when, but really it was a great release that the muskrat radio did at any rate. That's just the backdrop. So in the summary, if I adopted this rule, change by trying to fix this problem, we do not in any way anticipate any change of trap behavior, trap type use, increase in hearts, or even any change in the way that the animals died in these traps, because it's just a change of the check period to make it consistent with other traps set in the water environment in a way that the silo fish are out of that. So there really is no biological reason and I think that this should not be moved forward. I'm gonna stop you Chris for a second. Is there any board member questions about that colony? I think we've got to break this down a bit just a second. Yeah, is there any degrading of the mover between 48 and 72 hours? I have a bit of a looping in trap because that's something that's been brought up, and I can't find definitively in literature, all of society journals that there is any such thing. Again, this is a largely a great trap in season under the ice or in the water. Generally under the ice, I mean when a diamond is actually out there, but cold water regardless. Any other questions there? Thanks Chris. So again, Muscrap being easy, we'll move into a little bit more complex discussion. And before I get too far into it, I just wanna lay the groundwork for how I represent this. Because that is one of my biggest challenges is how I represent this. Because there's a lot of analysis done, some of which the methodology and the analysis I'm very new to, so I'm learning those things. Unfortunately I haven't been part of a team which presents some of these things. You all have a copy of the report that I put together, the session report, and I think for three weeks now I've had it. So rapidly they're trying to go through it all. I chose from that things that I felt were really the most influential in making our decision or making our recommendation. And I'm not gonna get into, for me to be here all night, because I didn't, I'm not gonna get into fine detail unless you want to, and I mask it, I'll make it great for the quality analysis. But also understanding that this is a bit like drinking from the proverbial fire hose to try to get to this point, I would ask the second, if they want to set it, that those that have been involved in this process to please jump in as necessary. You feel like I am not trained accurately or you can add to that basically more understanding. So please, please do. So, before you get into the conversation of God, that season extension, I think you have to understand a little bit of this dryness, because it is important. The department's rules in large part, traffic regulations in large part are designed both temporally for time, but also in design of traffic types that allow here and there to target sweeps of species. So the football traffic in November would be used for cars, kites, it's not necessarily just kites, although drivers can, they choose target by doing certain things that track is set, whether you bait, whether you pan attention, place them. But the point is that because you can trap that species, either species in that set, those seasons are confirmed. There are several examples of that and we're gonna talk about two of them tonight. The bobcat and fisher seasons and the otter and beaver seasons. With respect to the bobcat and fisher, it has been our intent to all of them to keep those seasons confirmed. In fact, I think the long history and I've detailed it a little bit better than I will now in the assessment before, which by the way, I think would be available on the department's websites, is that correct? Is that the correct? It is already on the department's website. For those that don't have access to the pier tonight, I apologize, please understand you can get it right away on the platform site. I lost my train of thought. Oh, fisher in the bobcat seasons. This has been our objective all along to keep them confirmed because the track type used for fisher is commonly used for bobcat. They are the sweetest seasons. So those seasons ran from current right up until 2004 where the department recognized the virgin and fisher population, which you go to detail on that, but there were concerns at the time for its impact, its ability to impact other resources. Martin being a prime example. And even to some extent, the big bobcat is part of the discussion. The recognition that the species are petrified when actually the fisher is a predatory in addition to competition. Then fisher population was by all of our measures and our ability to discern, to actually derive, we even thought at the time to the detriment of a very intensive Martin reintroduction approach. So at that point, 2004, we moved forward on a season expansion for fisher to include a whole month in the summer. But at that time, we exercised caution with bobcat. We didn't have the same data available. You're talking about much fewer animals, hiruses, much fewer animals means less data. And we didn't have as high a confidence of what additional hiruses to bobcat at the time we needed for the population. So at that point, 2004, we now have trap sets for fisher, which could potentially be catching cats. And we're gonna go through this a little bit greater detail. This is the backdrop. What I think is driving this petition item and something that has come out in a lot of the emails and formal conversations is that people think that it was about expanding opportunities to catch more fisher. And actually, I believe, based on conversations with lots of trappers, that really, I think the underlying motive here was to run this season's concurrent in recognition of an abundant cat population, bobcat population, which we have to be believed in abundant bobcat population. They wanted more to do away with the potential for any opportunity, any chance that a bobcat would be taken in the last half of December for one, for a variety of reasons there. Now also, one maximized utilization of that resource when a bobcat is taken in the last half of December, they have to forth and back to the state. So it's a utilization issue. So it's about reducing the potential for the harvest of that species out of season and maximizing utilization in the appearance of a abundant population that makes sense to do that forth. We're gonna harvest this out, great. And before we get too deep into the data part that I think struggled with whether this was worth addressing here or presenting here, how hopefully it succumbs to my long-winded nature, I wanted to give a little bit of historical context to what we're dealing with here. This is a busy graph of source and things I'd like to point out upon it is that this is just relative fun. This is not numbers, these lines don't represent numbers. It's scheme out, help people understand changes over time, they get back to pre-European side of it. When you look at Boggat populations, which is the red line here, back in pre-European settlement, they were actually fairly low. We had a bunch of competing carnivores and predators, bulls, mountain lions, lynx, and a few not so much colder temperatures with Boggat being at a normal extent of their range.  I think it's very reasonable to expect to be at fairly low populations relative to low. We also had an almost entirely forced environment, which Boggat certainly may be used in the forest. I mean, you can understand this, this is the most widely distributed land mammal in North America, or if not be, very close to the most widely distributed land mammal in North America. It's probably high as all the habitats, shy of the boreal forest. Some of the transitional forests across the world would be here. But the forest in landscape, landscape aren't necessarily the perfect habitat for all the population size. And as we decimated our forests, converted them to Agnan, and then eradicated the bulls, mountain lions, and so on and so forth, we actually are doing that for the favor of Boggat, apparently, here. And then looking at some more modern, getting closer to more modern times, there are a lot of key changes here. One of the things that we had far abandoned, industrial revolution, was farm fields, 80% of the state was farm fields, some farm fields were left fallow, they grew up in a really successful habitat, there were no predators. The Boggat persisted through this whole period. Despite serious persecution, you might ask, but that ideal habitat for this cat came about in this period here. We had white-tailed deer and others, a little bit lucky to say this, but we have a lot of white-tailed deer, how's that happen? No predators, the snowshoe ham, early successional habitat, scrub shrub, we know Boggat's a little bad stuff. Things changed, of course, in a row, we had a coyote move in, we introduced a fisher, things changed, the Boggat population responded. For looking at the bounty, I find this fascinating, they had to cut this up out of molded pork in the office, and this is both the cancer and the Vermont, from 1937 to 1972, which is when the bounty was ended here, well, it actually was ended in 1971. This is during that period where there was, you know, we kind of tipped the bounce a little bit there, with respect to habitat for the population, 400 animals by bounty, this is any kind of animal. Right down to 71, where you're still looking at 200, better than 200 animals per year. And if Boggat persisted through this, and then looking at contemporary management, as I said earlier in my introduction to this particular topic, that we have tried to keep these, but this doesn't have a fisher, I took that off, sorry, but looking at contemporary management, you can see that it has been conservative parts, comparatively, to an all right, all a bounty, just a decade earlier, essentially, a seven day tracking season, 16 day hunting, 12 day tracking, 29 day hunting, and this is where we are now, since 1996, for Boggats. There are a few key timeline things here, and it's also important to note that this line here does not represent any sort of population that's in the ranking, like the previous graph. This is hard as it was, just pointing out, I made the point that this can certainly system here, a little wider, it has played this, but it hasn't worked, there are plenty of Boggats out there. One of the most recent new kinds of the scene, I hear this from more and more people that, Boggats, I mean, bow arms routinely before being stalked by Boggats, I don't know, I've only heard that before. I do, it's something that I hear from a fair amount of, and you know, of course we had a pretty good talk about our turkey population in the state might as well, and I feel pretty strongly suggest that, that also has been a significant benefit, Boggats has been a significant benefit of service. And, we're gonna get into the victory now. So I apologize for the text on this, that wasn't the way I had it, it's too small to read, but this is the way that we chose to aggregate the data for Boggats, harvest data, pepper data, and so on and so forth. And we have traditionally aggregated our data by wallet management units, which are smaller units, there are, again, how many wallet management units, but there's a number of requirements more to buy the physical regions, which is what this is here. And that was done for a variety of reasons, number one, these are the buy the physical regions, so if there are some populations of Boggats in the state it would make sense that we are operating more in this framework than a smaller wallet management unit, that makes sense. But also it gives us the ability to aggregate larger amounts of data, because that's one of the limitations, you don't get a lot of data from Boggats. So at any rate, you'll see this, I want to talk about the buy the physical regions or regions in the coming slides, and just to run down, this is the tectonics. I pumped this Vermont Valley that light blue into the tectonic region, so that is not the city of one region for the purposes of this analysis. The chandelier valley, very long, or the chandelier valley is the Champaign Pimples, northern green mountains, southern green mountains, southern northern Pivon, northern northern Pivon, and northern east islands. I don't know if you've heard of that, but maybe you'll. So here we go, into some data. And I want to try to breeze through this, hopefully the new ones will come up in a couple of minutes later. So since 2004, right? Yeah, so 2004, this is the distribution of the progression of artists to the current 16th-century Boggats. They'll be confused by these those down here, this is June of 8th, so this is December 1st, 7th, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, all the 16th. It's just that I actually had a change in the power of my characterization talking about, and this is the total number of gats trapped. You can see there's a pretty distinct decline through the 16-day season, which is the number of gats trapped. So the temptation is to run that out and predict out here how many additional gats would be trapped through the sexual season expansion. And a lot of people might think that that would be out there not too many, but I go through some of the reasons why I don't have confidence in being able to predict with any certainty what the Boggat hours would be as the president. And as an example here, we're gonna look at another biophysical region, the Boggat Hards, the Northern Vermont Keymont, and that's the area between the Northeast Kingdom or the Northeast Coast, and the North Drew Mountains is a large biophysical region. Actually, we're in it right now, believe me. This draft is interpreted by what we have, hunting is represented by globes, trappers, vermin. And the point I'm trying to make to put this up is that one of the variables here is that trappers actually respond to health crisis, which I think is what drove this increase here in Harris in this biophysical region. We had a spike in Boggat health crisis in 2002 and 2013. It's logical to assume that these trappers responded to that. It's important to note, because at the last, this may seem alarm, but we're talking very low numbers for a massive biophysical region. Right down here, less than five up through 2011, we're tracking the talking vote. And then it jumps up to, whatever that might be, 17 there at a time. So it is, we're not trying to put this up, set up an alarm that this is bad, but I'm trying to make a point that there is a response. Trappers have the ability to increase their health. It's fairly rapidly insured, or, and in this case, you know, I'm tracking a little bit of that health. Looking at another biophysical region, same sort of thing. When we come together, 2012, 2013, fairly substantial spike. And again, this is the normal number in the office, the violence for reason right next door to the west here. And again, these numbers are fairly small. Two cats, the northern green mountains, up through that very trap, other than the spike here. And again, not a spike. Excuse me, Chris, on those years where there's a lot of trapping, so. Do you have any weather data? Yeah, that's not something that I put into this presentation, but it is something that I analyzed. And this is what I talked about. Number one, I think that this is based on lots of conversations with lots of people, but I think weather conditions definitely impacts traffic. Obviously, crusty snow conditions, so on and so forth. Trapper, trap function, memory. And access to the southern green as well. But the only data set that I had readily available to try to run any sort of analysis on that was our winter severity index, which is as good a data set as it is. It doesn't have that fine state of nuance that you would need to really detect trends. I ran through the process and I found road trends relating to winter severity index. And for those that don't know winter severity index is a system by which we collect data across the street and across the state, per biophysical region. And a winter severity index point is when the snow depths are at or greater than 18 inches deep and the temperatures are at or below zero. So that gives it points. Those points are summed up in the course of the month for that biophysical region. And there's also points in biophysical region. It's great data. We rely on a whole host of management decisions, but with respect to trying to link it to traffic, we couldn't do it statistically. But intuitively, I understand that that does play a part, all influencing parts. But when conditions are favorable, both in terms of the prices and weather, I mean, we can see the amount of spice and get a non-trivial alarm, but this is okay.  It hammers my ability to predict what might happen if we extend that season hour or two weeks. The other compounding factor here is that harvest is not distributed evenly across the state, in which that makes sense, right? The log-f populations aren't distributed out evenly across the state. And the factors are even. So when you look at this, there's a couple things I want to point out. This is harvest density. So typically, we look at harvest numbers, the hardest numbers that have been put to the land area in the wild, in these five-prison regions. It's a better way of looking at the hardest data as it equalizes the differences in the data within these five-prison regions with respect to size. So when you look at what you can see here, this is, I also should point out, this is traffic and hunting combined data. Is that right? Yes, it is. So you see, and I apologize for the difficult opinion as we read this clearly, but really the point that I'm trying to make, if you don't need to deal with standards down below, it's just that we have biophysicist regions where we have different trends in harvest, and we do it in other places, it's a mistake. This is a tectonics, this brown line here, this, oh that is, but this line here, is the Champlain Valley, so those in the northeast pines, the northeast one, those with the three in the standout. Chris, just a bunch of just, because you might want to quickly mention that the, you're looking at, Boccat harvest density, so it's, it's a harvest per area, per area of data, so it's accounting in this case for the different sizes, but it's geoschooled though, so it's standardized. So what you're looking at is really where the Boccat's are coming from, not just because one geospatial zone is larger than another. That's correct. Thank you. Again, to take on the point, this is that it's not evenly distributed across the landscape, so it just adds to our inability to deal with a particular concern of what might happen. Then, you add on to that, and I'm kidding, that's a demonstration that some of this is learned here a little bit, probably should not have shown the trend line right through the whole thing like that, for better or worse, that's what it is here. And, you know, based on this, it's pretty clear that there are increasing harvests. This is, I'm sorry, this is the number of single trappers for red line, and that's over here, for numbers. And this is the number of individual Boccats on average that each trapper harvests. And the point here is that you see increased harvests, both in terms of numbers of people harvesting them, as well as the numbers that they are delivering to the cashier. Again, not a lot of us, but this is an increasing trend. This impacts my decision on what we do with a seasonal expansion. We have seen increasing opportunities without expanding the season based on this. And then similarly, so as not to focus on the trapping, because you have to remember that there's a whole other season up here at Hunter. And this is the same data for hunters, so you can now see that there's clearly been increasing trends to pull up the numbers of hunters. And, you know, it's got a successively hard to see about that, and a slight increase, but an increasing trend in the number of individual Boccats at Hunter. So I guess, in that same vein of hunters and trappers, increasing rates of harvests, the other complicated factor here is that the hunter harvest is not equally common on the land, even sometimes they align with trapper harvest and other times they don't. But in this case, the Champlain Valley, I think it's very safe that the trapper harvest number of Boccats has increased quite a lot, so that's why the hunters have eventually increased in the Champlain Valley, and that's actually the drier part of that, the hardest density that we looked at in two slides earlier. In the Champlain Valley, conversely in the southern, I think this one's called, it's labeled as kinetic river valley, or southern Moa Pima, that's the Canadian river valley, the southern river valley. Trappers have contributed to the increase in harvests that are close to the current trend. The point is that there's a lot of areas that play into this, that make it difficult for us to predict with any certainty what would happen in two weeks to finish the Boccats. To up to this point, we talked about harvest numbers and trends, and all this is all very useful to help us understand what's happening up there. It's only part of the equation, and this is a key point. You have to take into account the amount of effort that people are spending, because the numbers of animals harvest is only part of the equation. It only tells you so much. The effort that is applied, the results in that harvest, is really what you need. And for Boccats, we collect that harvest number, under the effort, through the Traffinale Surveys, which is a voluntary Traffinale Survey, that was implemented in 1986. This is a response rate graph. You can see that it has definitely dropped off. We have tried to get this back to the VTA, the Monterravers Association, and we've taken some things to try to get that back up, and we've done a lot of this as well, and there are other things that maybe we can do in this respect. But when you're talking about an animal that only ends up in, say, 60, probably 55, 60, animals trapped for a year, that's on average, and you get a 30% return rate, you're only talking about data or effort on the animals, and you're trying to apply that per biophysical region, much less in the states, is impossible. And without effort data, we are not already blind by any stretch, we are more limited by our ability to predict what's going on, who explains what's driving the harvest. Catch pre-emptive effort is a key piece to help us understand all these early graphs of what really is driving analysis that I didn't believe in, I think I said that early on, because it wasn't driving what I thought to be the recommendation, it wasn't the key points, but they were, in our efforts, tried to trend certain harvest parameters, like sex and age, biophysical region, these sort of changes in sex and age ratios, of portions of females and ours, for example, there were Republicans that came up, and again, these aren't alarmists, I'm saying some of you are alarmists, because really when you look at the raw data that underlies it, especially in the early part of the data set where we had very little podcast, and you saw the graph of harvest, back in the 80s, very few castings, lower sample size, greater variability, and greater variability in the data needs to be uncertain. If there were two trends that I mentioned, that are worth noting in the sub-green mountains, the slight decline, well, the industrial decline, it was a serial, how many from this one? There was a negative serial correlation to the hardest one year with the hardest two years after. Which, in my way of describing this, that means that a high harvest year one would result in a low harvest in year three. And vice versa, low harvest in year one would result in a high harvest in year three. And why is that, for many of them, it's only because those sort of correlations where they exist could indicate that harvest is actually starting to change population demographics, or size, or what happened. Is that a thing? Yeah, it's great. The fact that it only occurred in one area, and that is it's hung on for two years, right, which is not implausible, but it's just, should many want a little, little closer, but it's really nothing that I would say is a flag, and other than it gives you a sense that maybe there's something that might want a little closer. But it couldn't be spurred, because the rest is spurred, as I mentioned. And this is in the assessment, and I did not, one of my conclusions for putting it on here is because I don't tell, I don't tell if I describe it or explain it well in my assessment report, so the reader would probably take away from that some of the differences that may not be happening, so I wanted to address that. The other is, and I find this fascinating is, I don't know what you're trying to assert, but I have some pretty good ideas for the Southern Makhima, that there was a very slight decline in the proportions of emails in the arts. Again, this is a age structure that we follow very closely over time, because that's indicating changes in your population structure, potentially caused by arms, maybe not by arms, there are other things. And in this case, there was a researcher in human age, a Ph.D. candidate, Aurora Carroll, who had come to Vermont to our main policy sessions where we were learning through the logcats for several years now, and has accumulated a lot of data on this. And through his genetic analysis, as a determined, and this is not out there, he had to solve preliminary results. But I think it's interesting that he's documented, that New Hampshire is a net exporter of logcats in the Vermont. And what gender are the ones that disperse the logcats between the males? And if we have a lot of males coming out of this region, which we know they do, come into Vermont, then we're logically going to be harvesting more males in that biological region, and thereby driving a decline in the female portion, not as a result of harvest, but as a result of immigration function, not as a population, that's exporting a lot of males across the country. President, let's go here at this point. Yeah. 2012 to 2014, logcap harvest seems to be going down, and then it bounced up to 2015. Is any of that market-related occurs like there's a lot of logcast at the 2012 that would depress the fur prices, would you keep trappers out of the woods in 2013-14? So, yes, the answer is that is entirely possible. In fact, I would say it was probable that there was some market that tried to, I mean, as a logical as a driver, it's not all market-related by any stretch, but that certainly plays into it, and you'll find an assessment that you have to have that data. You get the page number, but it would be probably male up in the sky. I do not include that in that concept. There is... Oh, what do you mean by that? It's actually pretty near-growing, I'm sorry. Like, even a lot of babies, yes, it is even. So, page 17 top graph a whole lot of those is going to be possible to see for us, right? I'll leave this line here, because you're about cat-hires, the stream line beneath it is the average price for a cattle reported through the Trafford hospital. And stay out for it. There is, I'm going to say that it was a particularly strong flow, I don't actually, this is particularly strong flow, but stay out for it. Again, there are a lot of factors, set in fact. Anyone else? Any other questions for our members? I think some seats have opened up in here, folks would like to have a check. So, this is one that I'm going to struggle with a bit, because I am always going to ask everybody, what's the population, what's the population? We don't know what you're doing if you don't have the population estimate. And I addressed it fairly well, I think, in the assessment before, why we don't have a population estimate, perfectly. What we do have is the ability to model things using different models, in this case, the downing model. Help inform us if we're going on in those populations. This is not the population, this is not the population of the Bobcats in the state, clearly. What it is, is the downing model follows a page called cohort two times. So in year one, all year zero is zero, the one year old is added up. And then in year two, you're one to two year olds are added to the zero to one year old, because they have the same age class, that's the age cohort, as it works its way through time, every year we're sending a little bit more of that same age class. And then at the end, you can add all those up, but either through your age matrix and you can get the population back in year one on those caps, if that makes sense. This is the hardest in the population, this is basically doing that for you, adding all that together, showing you the powers of the population. But again, it's not a population estimate, it's just another tool. And I won't spend a lot of time on it because it isn't the assessment before, but. Population estimates are not easy to come by. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't understand the realities of trying to get out there and do this work. I think Jackie's presentation I wrote today, which I don't really think that's in his book, it's not in our own, and we're not going to find one in his book. These are very difficult things to get at. I will say with respect to five of these estimates, what I anticipate that we can do is to get estimates from other indices that help add to this. So one of the things that's kind of great is our links work in the Northeast Kingdom, and our work in the Southern Vermont, our cameras, we've got the cameras set up, all those of us. That is awesome data. Actually, Jackie has a lot of cameras that you've heard about as well. So you're pooling that data, and there are, this is simple. So now you can find out how many cats come into your cameras, and you're going to do your harvest over your, this, the model, or what happened, but you're going to say at least for the camera to work and have a garden. Yeah, yes. I think the truth is, the curve is up a little bit about the downing argument. Those numbers on the outcome of what I asked is there. That is an absolute minimum estimate of the population, and it is probably grossly underestimated simply because it assumes that every animal in that population is eventually killed by a trap is as hard to do in some way. And of course, we all know that is not the case. And so it's grossly underestimating. The only value of it is the trend. So in other words, don't even bother even looking at the values of the numbers, just look at the directions of the lines. So we need to prove on the order. This is a lot more common. So in summary here, the department's recommendation for largely based on the fact that it's difficult for us to predict with any certainty what's going to happen is that it's going to be essentially double the volume. There are too many barriers. Secondly, we have increasing trends in hearts already. Without increasing the trap, in theory, we know that in the fact that we insert that we are insuring that there is an optimal opportunity for public appreciation or utilization of interactions with the species as well. Hunters, non-consent, the public, the trappers. And there are too many things involved with respect, too many variables involved with respect to be trying to predict with any certainty what's going to happen. That is being certain. There are other issues. I don't think there are big issues with respect to the portion of females. I think I've very easily explained what we need to do some work. And there are, that's essentially what I'm getting at. It's not going to start, right? Any board questions? Actually, yeah, the other thing. Oh, sorry. Yeah, there are going to be board questions about cats, or? Great. Kind of let them close and move on. It's not going to start from there, it's not going to start from there. I'm sorry, I have to demonstrate I had a mental problem, if I could just finish. Sure, Chris, thank you. And also, one of the other issues is just the data that we have. We don't have, without engaging our houndsmen and our fog cat hunters to get their effort data, some form of fashion, as well as the crowd mail service, we need that data to understand all these trends for the sake of making it a recommendation that is appropriate. Well done. Thank you. Are there other questions, folks? Obviously, we'll have more time, as we go on here, but anything specific? Because you're lucky, you've had a lot of this information for a week or so, though. I have a question. Thank you. At the end of your conclusion in bobcat analysis, you talk about influences on the bobcat population. What exactly are those influences that you're finding? It was, I've been following through the law to stop another deadline to find things and get it out there. And I don't believe that I did what I was attempting to do, justice. I was trying to face the summarize. The two trends that I pointed out, the southern one, A-law, and the southern one, has those are some indexes that would indicate that there's something going on. And out of abundance, people would vet that, get the data, and it would be the effort data, or additional genetic work that our partners would come in and answer them. But that's essentially what that was. It didn't necessarily come out that way, I realized, but that's what it was. Did that answer your question? That's the only influence at this time? I think that's pretty fair to say, yes. Okay, we'll set up folks. Thanks folks, move on. All right, so next up is River Offer. And again, there's a lot of stuff here. You can't provoke and save the time. So I'm focusing on the key things that led to our city. But I want to point out before I get into it, to your far, again, just a little bit of context for how this came to be. There's so much in the bobcat that that's the sweetest species. That had traditionally been open for trapping during the same season. That makes sense. Because the bobcat, actually, the otter and the beaver can be caught using the same traps. There are ways to make them selective. The way to place them, where to place them, so on and so forth, that you will catch one in the trap set for another, despite the age set, the legal age and problem. So, you know, the history is in the assessment report here, but in a nutshell, we have always known these seasons from the current. So 2007, in response to urgent beaver complaints that were coming in, and this goes back because there have been a lot of beaver issues. And we wanted to give trappers an opportunity to harness the beaver in the season, when they can be utilized, versus how to seize it, when they aren't utilized because they don't find it. And to be clear, that happens, as we all know. So the initiative at the time, 2007, was to expand the beaver season, specifically, and not the otter season at that time. But then, for the first time in the last history, we had this opportunity for otter, a bit, very few numbers, and we're gonna go through this to be caught. Due to some of the talk in beaver traps in Monk. So it's driving, it's petitions, very similar to the bobcats that can design most trappers. They don't even want to take anything out of the season. For a host of reasons, again, the utilization of the resource, the carcass is seized, forfeited, a lot of talk by the Monk, but also the climate that we're in right now, the social climate, people who don't necessarily understand the context of trapping sees upon these opportunities when there is one bobcat I've taken in the month of March and on in 2012, to use that to demonstrate that no traps were selected. All of these are dangerous. It's a challenge, you know, you're not going to win. Yeah, the good point is that trappers don't want to catch any more trappers in their large part, they're very, very, very successful. And also similar to bobcat, the request is going to violate their knowledge, that they're not going to be able to catch any more trappers, and that they're not going to be able to catch any more trappers, but their knowledge is not a bunch of resources. There's a lot of otter out there, and so it makes sense. And then also they understand and share our objective in trying to minimize out-of-season harvests of beaver as well, and the likelihood that incidentally taking otter to Bruce's beaver traps, you know, that's possible. Let me just give you this one. I want to explain it. First, I think we need to just take a peek at the nature of beaver and otter. When we talk about management, one we are talking about management, the other. They are intertwined, both in terms of the habitats they occupy and sometimes the behavior, they are intertwined. So you can't enforce that. Historically, just going back briefly, back in time, 1600s, pre-European times, we've decimated the beaver population, and everybody here recognizes that, understands that. They made 1670, I think, over a quarter of a million beavers or shipwrecks on the Connecticut River alone, that's substantial. By the time the wagging chains were making their way out fast, there were no beavers here. And with that liquidation of that wildlife resource, we saw declines and all these other species which relied on beaver. They are keystone species which create habitat. And I want to hammer this one again, again, because this is not about any hatred for beaver. They recognize their incredible value ecologically. Moose, toxin-all types, wild-all types. The other thing is a beaver on landscape that really is impressive. When they occupy habitat, they eat themselves out of the house at home, bend the site, that site there ends up becomes very plush. When venom regenerates as early succession, it will be removed back in. The cycle of their disturbance on the landscape is incredible. It's a boon for all types of wildlife. In fact, in plants, in insects, we have a new wildlife management area in southern Vermont called Turner Hill Wildlife Management Area that specifically purchased for the protection of beaver so that a federally endangered plant could subsist there, which is reliant on the cycle of beaver to prosper. The point here is that otter, you know, are a part of this time factor. In Maine, back in the, I think it was the late 80s, there was a research project that was done in Mount Desert Island where they were trying to figure out other parts of the state by what was driving the absence of presence of beaver. And they tested 39 variables of the landscape, stream, length, shore, offshore, line, roughness, and on and on distance to human infrastructure, 39 variables of the landscape. And the one that predicted the occurrence of otter, a long shot was the presence of active beaver and the one that predicted the presence of otter by the second measure was the presence of inactive beaver. So very clear, this animal, otter, relies on beaver. And when you look at the history of beaver in the state, you know, I think it's fair to say that the otter population has trapped the beaver population into the present. Do not say it's fair. So they're engineers of the landscape as we all recognize and there's some fun facts buried here that I'm going to talk about. Mars Wilson is a zoologist way back in the day from Sweden. I think this was the late 60s, early 70s. He had captive beaver. He had several kits that were isolated from parents. He kept them in captivity, isolated from any other results from birth to the study. And he put them in a dry concrete tank with a recorder of the sound of water and there were a bunch of sticks and stones and just pots and pans in that tank. And those two beaver built a dam using that stuff. No water. They built a dam around the report. It's true about us. Another thing he found is that these same kits that have been isolated from adults built in an actual environment outside actually built dams as well as any adults could build. So this discussion, this is an innate quality of being. They built dams. That is what they used for creating this incredible reversal on the landscape. And the department, again, recognized that way back then. You know, we've lost the population. It's unregulated. They haven't had that destruction and so on and so forth. But early on in our history, we recognized that beaver were a keystone species and without the fact that we weren't going to be able to restore some of the population. So in 1920, I think it was 21, we began a traffic truck project where we had a fever from northern Maine, a small number, brought down to Bennington County where they prospered. And as they prospered, we got trapped and relocated to their offspring from the proxy state to 1937, I believe. And I think what's kind of cool here is that in 1941, I believe it was, yeah, 1941 they created a survey of the beaver population. So this is four years after the last introduction, the last traffic truck. And they determined that sort of 400 beavers in the states is based on the active beaver column in the county. They determined that there were 400 beavers in the state in most counties, not all counties in the county. And then again in 1944, they repeated that same survey methodology. Three years later, there were 1,100 beavers. And then in 1949, they repeated again the same methodology. Again, there was a different environment back then. They had a different landscape, different and some of them were from animals. But still the point is that these animals were prospered by 1950. All right, so it's 1954. Now by 1950, yeah. So this is a year after the last survey was, a year after the last survey were 8,000 were dying in 1949. The beaver complaints were already there. So the department kicked off its first ever modern regulated harvest beaver. 15 days' season. During that first 15 days' season, they harvested 1,100 beavers, which was the population estimate in 1944, six years ago. I say that because it's remarkable. It's remarkable. It's a high quantity. Pretty impressive. So yes, it's all good. We love beaver. One on our landscape. We're going to keep them here and manage them appropriately for that purpose. There's a lot of issues with beaver. They have to cause them. They know issues for private lands, roads, and they don't want to harbour that too much. We all get it. You don't have to travel far. You see beavers and causing issues. Part of that is because of our history of the era. Our infrastructure was largely built in a beaver-free environment. This is our fault. We get this in the fish market for humans.  The vast majority of our roads were put in. There was every road in the state alive. Right this side of the stream and the next one on the ground. It's exactly where it should be if you want to avoid beaver issues. That is where it is. And in the talk about infrastructure, I'm not talking about agricultural issues or private landowners and all of the variety of issues that beavers have created for them. We look at just the state of Vermont and the roads that they maintain. There are 64,000 culverts under the makings of GMD trans. There's 14,000 plus miles off state highway. Not including municipal roads, not including private highways. It's incredible. We've created this perfect story. So, what do we do? Well, you know, in recognition that there are resources we don't want to turn into a nuisance species, that's what we don't want to do. We want to maintain public perception of these as positive, as a desire on the landscape that we use public perception for these species. Our ability to manage them effectively is diminished greatly. So, we go to great extents to work to try to resolve beavers' problems. In fact, in the department and in the assessment report, we invested $37,000 direct technical assistance to beavers alone. To put that in perspective, that's about 20 to 25% of my further budget, which covers 17 species, including federally listed, state listed, 13 harvested by trap and 6 harvested by hunting. So, 20% plus of my budget goes to resolving beavers' problems. Our staff that we bring on, seasonal staff, to deal with this, respond to an access of 100 calls or emails a year from the plane of the beaver. We do an access of 50 cycles a year. This is the time we want to get out there and it's a lot of education. It's a lot about, oh, this is what you could do, this is what you could do, you know. It's totally welcome. We invested a lot of time into trying to maintain beaver and help resolve problems in a feasible manner. And here's some results. To that effect, since 2000, we've installed over 291 control structures statewide. Control structures are baffles, receivers, there's a variety of ways that people prefer. But they're essentially devices that you can install and help to mitigate the problem. To help us be able to control the water level and not the beavers. To mitigate the problem issues. And fences, exclusion fences, mostly from culprits.  Despite this effort, despite this effort, still today, based on our Trapper Man Survey, we are able to determine that on average, we are able to be the hardest because approximately 35% in the system, approximately 35% in the United States. Despite this effort. And there are probably citizens that also offer these services as well. So it's not just not still it's still not getting to where we want to be. That's high enough. And you can complicate it further is the way that the regulatory nature works here. This is controlled by the statute. We've got the loosens rule to the statute. And it really hinders us from being able to collect data on what's happening outside the season. We can collect a lot of data from licensed Trappers in the season. But what's happening outside the season it's hard for us to really follow and we have to use what they are supposed to be having. Let me get it back. So we do rely on Trapper. And here's why. In this case, it cannot be ignored as a private tool to manage an evil. Honestly, we're not going to battle our way out of this. We can't. It's not the one-size-fits-all solution. Trapper is an effective tool for helping us manage this population. It is important to understand and this is why. Trappers have to have landing on permission. They need access as well. They're not plugging their equipment deep into the woods. You know, they are going to have access and they're going to landowners that have different permission and farmers are a big one because they're the ones struggling here. The point is that the harvest of beef from this regulation through this season structure is largely targeting that portion of the population that is most likely to cause problems. Does that make sense? No. Why is that true? Why is it true? Well, if you have to set a trap and you're walking in a quarter of a mile or half a mile and you've got to check that trap and report some rules and then if it gets to be, you've got to lug it out and people do that. We're not trying to suggest that it does not happen. We're suggesting that on a whole trappers are targeting those portions of the population beef population that are the most accessible which are the ones that are the most likely to cause problems and where they have access to the landowner permission. Again, it's not one size fits all. I mean, we suggest that all trappings take place in the spot. We're trying to do that with a trap beaver. The majority, pretty clearly, is the least accessible. I need to hustle. I'm giving some time. This is my opportunity to try to make these points of cost. These are big issues. These are a lot of people, a lot of people on these matters and I want to make sure that we do justice to this position. So in 2007, another part of the problem here, in 2007 when the beaver season was expanded we also implemented some certain rules that would help to minimize the likelihood that by taking the beaver trap set we preferred to use the trigger rules and these were based on a design that was tested in New York, I think also in Tennessee, and that meant it was going to be a success in reducing the producing of capture in these traps. And essentially it's a system of moving triggers to one side by a certain size trap and the configuration of the trigger itself and so on and so forth. We won't give it to those weeds. And I think it worked largely. I think here in Vermont when we did that I think we did not see a big spike when the seasons diverged. We did not see this spike and incidentally ought to harsh through the march. It didn't happen. So clearly this helped and the problem here is that it works but it also interferes with the proper trap function and the monkey around it and it allows us to get further into the trap where you're trying to do this a lot of order to pass through it quickly and a large part they do. Occasionally one gets into there and it sets the trap off and the way that it was designed to set off. It interferes with the proper trap function. And that results in a situation where the animal does not die as rapidly as the trap was designed to kill it. So that's a welfare issue that needs to be pressed into. Trappers have not many with Q and I've pointed that out and I think it's our objective here to try to address that. I wanted to point out something too here the two millivolts is that prior to the season expansion we marked the fever which is here 44% of fever were taken in the defensive target that's outside of the season so prior to us expanding the fever and then after the season expansion we saw the fire 20% but those are the numbers so I read that as well at the season expansion in March actually worked that was the design was to reduce the fever taken out of season and also because if we can reduce the amount of fever taken out of season which is happening by anybody we are logically also reducing the likelihood that water will take out of season it's now losing interest as well alright, we're going to just go through some of the data which we've derived for our recommendations again, similar to the biophysical imaging map that we put up earlier this is a watershed management map that's the scale which we collect our data to assess it so here's just straight up auto-harvest and then we present what I would essentially say to increase the load there is a whole host of factors but over the long haul it's maybe increasing the load but I'm not doing this trend in any way similar to the harvest isn't distributed all over repeatedly across the last year so that slight increase in the overall state harvest is largely being driven by these increases here in WS-73 which is that's the Champlain route I take that back I'm getting a lot of that confused I apologize a lot of numbers here WS-73 is the autumn creek a little long creek on Lewis Street so let's remove WS-73 from the harvest over that period of time there is no trend at all so similar to the autumn creek we put the autumn harvest on the desks and the autumn is widely afforded as river run water taken per river run that's the measure like that and so when we do that the harvest that we saw the increased harvest of WS-73 disappears repeatedly and it indicates that well it's a large watershed or you should manage an unit with a lot of water resources and so when there's a spike in the harvest like that it's just such a big area and the harvest density doesn't respond like it does in smaller units so it disappears and then the others when we look at this as a measure of debt and these others rise to the top and WS-72 WS-72 WS-73 is 13 of those that really rise to the top and that may seem alarming but why would you keep them more there so this is a function they took it all to process stuff this is clearly a function of river run and how the models have so WS-MU-13 for example which is this blue line here that's the lower Connecticut river valley well the Connecticut river is actually in the Hampshire so we'll walk in the GIS layer where there's a lot of units to be used for getting the river models and so that whole river doesn't add in to river models so of course it's going to influence your calculation of water oxygen but what about the Connecticut river is a rich source of water similarly WS-MU-12 which is in the Deerfield range in the south-central Vermont those who know that area though there's a variety of lakes pyramids, deerfield sarsabers the number of other smaller bodies of water well the river model does not capture the bodies of water as part of the density estimate and why we know utilize ponds and rates WS-MU-2 which is the Hedderley-Holkeberg it's the same thing Castleton or Bosnian Sinclair to Catherine Elathoron Scars all over that Washington I only emphasize this so that this doesn't allow people to see that essentially our water across the state its density is pretty pretty stable as is our traveler's success and the numbers of animals that each traveler is taking and getting back to the gate there is no significant trend in the increase in the number of successful travelers even for now the numbers that they are individually taking has increased a little bit but it's a pretty big trend and unlike in the Bobcat there is no hunter harvest on the farm so we don't have that complication this is solely about then we look at the age structure of the honor population this is a state line this is probably none other than a watershed management which we did so in the Bobcat there is auto correlations and cross correlations but here these are very stable there is no significant trend at all and this down here is a little bit of a mystery what happened here but I think it's actually a result of just the data collection process more than anything it's probably very low sample size I think that's exactly what it holds sure what it is I don't know what this means here I've scratched my head on that one but I haven't come up with those there's a lot of variables that can affect this but there's no significant trend these are healthy lines we already talked about the down model and its limitations and its intent I hope I'll do that again here but this is the up and down model again it's just showing that there is some turning in this population I believe to be true based on beaver it's on assessment of the hearts everything else Chris emphasized on this and the same thing with the Bobcat is that this is compiling the heart the population is actually big hearts so if that population is growing over time it's suggesting that the heart is on a population unless in some way it's increasing and then on top of this you have the portions of the population that nobody hearts has no access less at an on top of this and in our recommendations I believe I highlighted that that's an important point population is in pretty good perspective I forget the numbers exactly here but I think it's something like 80 successful trappers 50 year of the highest harvest 254 hours of record harvest 80 87 successful trappers that's roughly one trapper for three counts and that same year based on traveling that survey the average number of traps the trappers produce 5 trappers are not effectively covering the whole state that they have so here's the last bit and that is this is the trend that we can rely on we don't have all of the carriers we don't have WSMUs that are experiencing different things with respect to harvest soft bar cattle we don't have hunting we have a long season that allows us to track it better and you look at this I don't really need statistical analysis to look at this and suggest that we're not talking many animals through the month of March and the season is extended What's your number? 7? 8? Absolutely I mean again it will be very near here but on average over the long haul I would guess it would be in that order and we have somewhere 3 to 11 3 to 11 so the other part of the tier 2 so if we expand the season into March we continue to harvest fever during that season which has netted direct benefits to us in the sense of keeping this is our greatest success possible we are now taking out of season to the minimum not eliminating but helping that in fact that alone could actually make up for the difference in order that would be hardest in here as a result of the season expansion because of the potential for incidentality of odd and useless view of traps on the season again here there is no rules for that in the sense that you don't have to have a license you don't have to have any education in the sense of trapper education to do that kind of work I think you have a much better scenario to have a license trapped with experience using the best quality tools we've got in a season who utilize resources that have them returning to a nuisance further degrade public perception which further degrades our ability to manage them and to keep them as abundant as we have and possibly even reduce our taking during that time we do it just makes sense and that is our but the thing that has been brought up and it is a concern that it bothered me, I summed it up for a while, I said well if you set this up you're going to be abandoning pups we're giving in to that art tuition birth and period when you go to the literature and you look at art you're going to find a range of birth and dates, partridge February to April well in the northern climates we tend to be on the latter part of that the thing to understand to you is that we have been collecting every art of art that is in the state of Vermont for decades and unlike Fisher there's not a lot of sexual dysborphism between sexes meaning that they look similar and they're harder to determine from the other especially once the trapper has removed the pellet and so if there's no backbone which is the penis bone on the otter there's no backbone we open up the animal to look at the reproductive trap to determine the sex definitively in my 22 years here I have to believe I am I did the math on it unless there was an excess of 100 female otters why should I say I I meant all of us in fact there's a lot of people who participated in this but we have looked at an excess of 100 females harvested in February and actually looked at their reproductive traps and only once inexplicably did we see anything that even resembled any you open up the otter and you look at there's nothing but an reproductive trap except for this one time in 2000 a life where they were developed still very small a long life from birth but they were developed in 2000 so yes I guess that wouldn't decay I guess that's possible but the other part of the puzzle here is that birthing mothers or popular mothers aren't necessarily on the landscape to the extent that males are and you look at like New York's experience where they track these things as you get in looking at Apples I asked specifically what's happening in March and in March there are 70% males because females are moving toward parturism and then later they get into April actually birth and pupper area and so they are harvesting more males which is good that's what we want that scenario so I think when you're talking about the traditional products being single digits and then 70% are being males and then the likelihood that they are going to give birth in March based on our observations over years of progress examinations I don't think that it's a real issue what's the gestation period for ours 62-63 last slide the summary the current level of harvest there's no there's no there's no there's no testable influence of harvest on this population from our analysis there's no harvest data there's no sex and age structure quite some foam we can actually do better We do better with better travel mills really to get better effort data in the end of the day. But the data we have, pretty clearly, there's no technical interest. The number of a lot of harvested volume extensioners we just talked about would be very pretty few. And it's even possible that it would be more than a lot of set by saving on an out of season, as we've already talked about, the incident we've long been taking to reduce the need for travel. And the issue of up abandonment, I just, I don't see it there. I'm not going to say that it would never be possible to see that one in 2011. Even that one I was convinced that it would have made it to our church by the end of March. So it is in all of this I would be able to come to the conclusion that it would make sense to move that season forward. And some opinions would address the trigger rule to restore the proper trap function, maximize the function of that trap to make sure that they would operate the way it supposed to operate. That concludes the show. Any other questions folks from the board? Yes, thanks, Justin and Patrick. Yeah. Otters are caught by which type of trap? Would it be volume trap, the kind of their crushing trap, or the above ground trap? Well, they're quarks, so they are already lost. They could be either football or content. I think you don't track what traps are being used by our traps. There are rules that are regulated. We're not asking which of those that are allowed are being used. But I think it's fair to say that the majority are being caught in the trap. Okay. So some of them will have to dispatch the animal? Well, again, for both traps, an animal trap can also be used in the water, as it kills the salmon. Yeah. Thanks. Chris, do you know what the current average incident will take is brought over throughout the rest of the feeder season? Oh, I think I have a question right back here. Patrick, I'm sorry, someone couldn't hear you back here. I'm asking about the incidental take. Yeah, I have that. I have been struggling to keep a lot of these numbers in my head as far as I'm at it. Again, actually, I think it was a five on average of $2. This is the key, because then we have no way of knowing, depending on how many of you have taken out of season, because there's no reporting department for our take now of season, as incidental take of traps. So the only way we're getting there, the only requirement that the statute allows for the forest is to keep a land or a mushroom to keep that animal for their purposes, that they have to give up the carcass to the water. So that's where that need to come from. This has been at least, on average, five on our take in out of season. We don't know how many beyond those that were actually chosen to catch five on that. I didn't explain that very well at all. Basically what it sounds like is that, assuming there are some that are reported, the average number of the incidental take is probably the same as the projected take throughout the rest of the launch of March. I'm going to have to ask you one more time. If the projected take, like standard season, is over between 3 to 11, and you have five on average over the last few years, and assume that some are not reported, it's fairly similar to what the incidental take would be, so would you be projected to be worse? I have a Bobcat question. Is that okay? Absolutely. Along Patrick's comment, you were back talking about Bobcat, I could say the incidental catches are at an average of two in the last two weeks, or it's not an incidental take. So wouldn't that be a good estimation of how many would be taken if the season was expanded? Not necessarily. They're only being, those are only being, those in the areas that are killed are the cognitive traps set for fishermen. So there are football traps that people use, either for podcasts. They don't target them at the end of the season. Right, because if Bobcat's season ends, they stop applying football traps, instead of the season, that does not prohibit someone from setting field traps for podcasts. Yep. So again, you can't use that number to suggest that that is what would result. I mean, the proposal doesn't go into any, the petition would go into detail, but in conversations with people, the intent is never to change the rule of elevating the corner bear off the ground, or not to close the schedule, it didn't go into detail. So what kind of honor and triggers the rule that we try to minimize the likelihood of Bobcat being taken in the last half of the summer? Okay, so kind of wasn't clear if the intent was to take that away? No. And is that it, or? I don't think that's the intent. It wasn't in the petition. It didn't specify it. So just to clarify, though, if we're told the traps are set in the last half of the season, trapers now, if they catch a Bobcat and one can release it unharmed and let it go, if the season's expanded, then a cat caught on a football trap would then be something that could be taken. Yeah. And assuming if it were to stay the same, it would only be an average of two cats. Other questions? Thank you. We're going back to Otter's. Don't say if somebody wants to keep the pellet, they need to acquire a sightie's tag for that. They want to export it out with them. Well, actually, to keep it. So... I don't believe that. I want to law enforcement to weigh in on that. But my understanding is the sightie's tag is where it can be exported out. Let's hear from Dave. Yeah, thank you. So the question was that if an animal is taken out of season, does the act have a sightie's tag always? If it's going to be kept? If it's going to go to market, it's going to be sold, yes. Or if somebody wants to bring it to a tax return, it... It doesn't have to be that, yes. If it goes to a tax return and it's in state, it's a sightie's tag. Okay. So as of right now, if any of those otters are taken as in the sense of the case, they're not having people require them to get a sightie's tag because they want to keep the pellet? Again. So there's a lot of documentation out of season that the land owner can choose to keep. They have to contact the game. And as I... They don't get a sightie's tag. Okay. That's already... The ward has already taken the arches, the tag, the herb, and the carcass.  So that's included in that, on average, five. Okay. You hadn't said anything about sightie's tag in the other seasons. That's why I wanted that clarification. Yeah. Just next week. So in your catch trend for your otters, I wanted to at least give us some idea of the catch week. So you can have increasing harvest potential, not as a result of the changes here. Already increasing in perspective. And then you have a very clear response to favorable conditions and health crisis that can jump that up pretty quickly. Then you've got, you know, the variance across the landscape with respect to the harvest density and state of placement is a lot of variance mixed in there. And you might be able to come up with a number, but I have no confidence. I have no confidence. So I have one more question. You might want to get your bag for this one. Why couldn't the Department see in how you know each bobcat that's taken has to be tagged and reported. Do like a three year test period to see what the extra tape would be for extending the season for the two weeks. I guess I would rather act in caution and I'd rather try to answer some of these questions that we've put forward than with respect to the age of sex structure and current data. That's what we need to do. I don't want to put species at risk of any experiment away. In your assessment, you're saying that there's a perfectly stable population abundant population. Well, if I said perfectly stable population. Well, I mean, I'll read it if you want. Healthy, stable population.  Stable with its variability. But you said there's really no influence per se on them right now. That's why I'm saying it. In terms of hunting and trafficking, it's not set in the population. That's right. That's where we want to be. That's where you don't want to be driving the population through harvest. Other species like we just talked about with beaver. It's different. You never see these different. They're different objectives. Well, they're not your mother's. It's a significant portion of the harvest of all cats and of hunters. That's right. It's not just driving. So that doesn't exist with hunters. So there's another reason for caution there. There's an increase in the amount of all the funds. But again, I don't want to jump up and down. I think it's just a large amount. Chris, how many acres is Vermont? So when you talk about incidental take of two animals on six million acres, that seems like a small number. Well, we'll say it's five million.  I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's inappropriate, man. This is not how we run a meeting. I'm sorry. Ma'am, you make me say it's required. Sorry. Thank you, guys. Say again. My question was on five million acres. If you have two incidental catches or six, that is a really small mathematical number. I think it's a testament to something. But it is small. It's a small number. OK. Any other questions for Chris? Yes, Phil? OK. We got trappers harvesting bobcats, hunters harvesting bobcats. If they were to extend the season on bobcats, could you say that the hunter, the hunter take might go down because they're not there anymore if we harvest them? If you trace that, I just want to make sure I'm phrasing this. Just make sure I get it. You're asking if we've traced the harvest of bobcats and trappers with that influence potential take by hunting their out. Yes, sir. I stated that there is some potential there. And if you recall two graphs that go up, and this is without effort, that's weird. That data is so critical for us to be able to return. But the graph, in particular, was here. There's northern Rocky on and no three mountains for those spikes. And on bobcat harvest, in one of those, I think there's another three mountains. There was two years ago we actually had a spike of bobcat harvest for trappers. There were no bobcat harvest by hunters. And they were hunting the full size of that in the years that you've got to have. And I don't know what happened. I would venture to guess if you went back and checked your weather, you would find those two years where the bobcat harvest was high in trapping, that there was heavy snow. Yeah. It's darn hard to run bobcats in heavy snow with dogs. I get that. They don't tree and stay there. They jump out and take off again. And it makes it hard to take them. So that's why you have a high harvest in Champlain Valley. Because it's a completely different climate than over here. Can I just jump in on the original question about whether or not the trappers would be sort of removing bobcats that hunters could take? Well, of course, a lot of that's going to depend. You really know. Because a lot of that's going to depend on if those are the same bobcat populations. Each one is harvesting. In other words, you're harvesting a population that is accessible to you. Now, if the hunters are trapping or harvesting a population of bobcats in different areas, then typically the trappers do. There's not going to necessarily be a lot of overlap there. But if they are homing in on the same available population exposed in a population at risk, then they would. So it's a really hard question to answer, really. Because you don't know if they're actually debiting the same population of bobcats. Because they may be coming to trouble in different places. Very different places. Yeah, I assume it was a hard question. It is a hard question. But it's also a hard question to figure out how many bobcats are going to be caught from the 16th to the 31st. And if the suggestion was that we try a three-year period and revisit it, then you know. You have data. What you've done here with this report, which hasn't been done for 15 years, is now you have a baseline that you can go back to. This is admittedly a deeper look into it than we normally do. Year-to-year, every year through the process of collecting our data is compiled and analyzed and tracked because of conversations that require a deeper look to address appropriately the petition. You have a ton of fantastic data in this report. You really do. I think it's fantastic. The harvest data is there. It's solid. It doesn't lie. Man, it's hard to put bobcats, fishers, odors in. I think that's great. The one major loophole that I see, or not really a loophole, but issue is the fact that you're not getting that effort. So my question is, is it only a mail-in survey? Yeah, well, yeah. Why can't it be reported online? Well, we had an online, another edition of online. There are issues with that. How many years ago? When that was raised back and it's not effective. And we have talked about that. Yeah, but that was years back. I mean, now the technological leap has been incredible. Also, all the folks that bring in the bobcats and the fishers, do every one of those folks turn in a hunter effort survey? No. They have to turn in the car parts. Yep. But do you not have to turn in the car parts? Do you know every person that turns one in? It's a real simple way to get the effort to put forth when those have been brought in. Stop. What else? Hunters. All the hunters are the licensed holders. That's another one. I think that's very workable. The very department never considered a tag for your charge, kind of like the model that New York does. We've talked about that. Yeah. I mean, I think that'd be another great way to track and differentiate how many licensed holders are actually going to be actively seeking out pets. I mean, I think that there's great, I think those editions. Before I think we go on any of these, I think we should really address some of these data question issues. Just my thoughts. Mr., you talk a little bit about the purview of the board. Do we have permission to set a regulation that would mandate trapper surveys? I believe you could, right? You can mandate requirements in order to have a law for hunting and trapping, I think. I would expect so. I'd want to talk a little bit more with the board about the difficulties of doing a hunter tag. If you were going to go that way, we could make you a proposal. I'd like to have a little bit more time for Chris and other members of the department to talk about some of the challenges of a hunter for a bearer tag. We would propose also some of the advantages of that. It sounds like, Cheryl, we could meet that requirement of a mandate. Other questions? Yes. One thing that might be of consideration is if we were to go to the last two weeks or include the last two weeks of December for Bobcat, one of those weeks is a big vacation week which would put potentially a lot more trappers in the woods during that week, which could be a bigger take, which we don't know about. Another bearer. This is Kiers. Theresa, yes? Yes, looking at some of the upswings in the Bobcat take, part of that because of the food source comes in those and weighs in the snowshoe hairs. They have an upswing, so then there's a food source. Bobcats have a lot of food, so they're going to have more kids, so they're going to survive, so it's going to have a higher take because they're doing well, and then they're going to go down because of food source, so if you're looking at the trend, I've written that down. You have to submit a fur buyer's report to get your new license in July, so again, we're not talking 100,000. We're talking 1,000. How many license trappers do we have right now? Chase Community. We're in a call-call of 7,800. Right, and you're only getting 20%. About 20-30 researchers. We have a very good trapper 54% of them are only trappers. Right. Half of them, basically. Chris, just a brief decision, if I can. Blue cards are mandatory, and they're a title of important business to trapper. Maybe a backside of this blue card for an adversary would take five minutes with an important face to face. I volunteer more for a certain amount of my guys than the others, but I think it would be a sure way to get it. Jason, excuse me. You're talking about that individual item that they're submitting, like their otter, or the blue tag, so that hunter's survey would be just how many hours it took to get this one particular animal? Whatever that. I'm not committed to that kind of survey, so whatever that would entail on the backside of that card, I just can't imagine that this whole survey would come out. How are we doing? Any other questions for Chris here? Topics is easy. All right. We'll go on later. We're gonna keep going. Thank you, Chris. Appreciate it. I really like to take a, I know this is a quick five-minute break for bathrooms. That's probably fair. Four bathrooms across the road here. There's two of that as well on this building. We'll see if we can get right back to work. We have about, it looks like, well, if people check the site name, she has like this big thing. It looks like we have about maybe 25 minutes worth here. Some people wrote it, time allowed, which is generous, but, you know, we can do that. I think we have time for it now. What I'd like to say is, you know, we have so many experts in the room. It'd be great if everybody who we could point to and say they're an expert and speak for more than a minute, you know. I'd love to be the expert if you could speak for more. But this is not a hearing.  We don't say, gee, you're out of order. Here, we just have a lot of people, many of them now past nine o'clock, who, some of them have to drive to Bennington, some have to drive to, you know, the island's all over the place. So, we're going to limit to a minute. We don't limit our access to ourselves. You can certainly talk to us at other times. What I'm going to do is just take this list, and I'll just front page that, page back and forth, down to all those guesses. If you start to hear redundancy or if you start to hear something you've already heard, what you can expect then is that, you know, maybe the point has been made. I don't want to silence anybody. It's not my job. It's my position. I think if we had a cheering contest, like I do in middle school basketball games, that'd be exciting, but that's not what we're here for. So, we have a timer tonight. Is there someone who can help us out? Can I see phones?  Maybe you didn't see the yes call. Thank you for saying that. I certainly don't want to limit folks. You know, the authoritarian groups, because I want to hear, I want to make sure we have an eye contact. While people are speaking, just please, let's listen. Let's not beat the tractors from this event as it's gone so well so far, you know. Someone might say something you disagree with, because they're surprising that. I hope not. So, here we go. I'm sorry, I have one brief addition to that. And we can keep track of the comments. That's very helpful. And also, please don't cheer or clap for folks. There are many people who are saying things tonight that we'll have support from other folks in the room. We get that. If we cheer and clap, we're just going to be here until summer. I understand that they're supported of different positions here, so thanks. I apologize. I remember from all the radio, I'm going to be burning around to see what happens out. I'm going to hold the mic while you're offering more comment. Thank you, Peter. I wonder if you were... So, again, thank you so much. We'll just start. We hear from Sean Smith first, please. Kevin, can we put a time limit on this? A minute. Yeah, but I need to pose. It's a quarter of nine, ten o'clock or something. I think your point very well. I'm not sure how to set that. What's your suggestion? Ten o'clock. That's an hour and fifteen minutes. You can't get it done by then. I agree with you. How many people are on the list? Mathematically, that would be way more generous than we'll need. Nine fifteen. I'll check your facts. Alright, let's go. Come here. So, Nicole, I'm Sean Smith. In a second, how about the Walter Anderson person? Walter Anderson, ready? Thank you. I'm Walter Anderson, my partner. I was a trapper, and I lived here not 60 years ago. And I don't believe the Bob Cador, the Otter, could be killed at all. Especially if your attitude is telling what increased me in time. Sean Smith? I'm going to keep moving up the line if I don't see those people. Okay, thank you. Hi, I'm Sean Smith. I'm from Huntington. I am a farmer and I'm a steward of 1300 acres at the base of Council on the State Park. I'm also a wildlife tracker. And the way that we steward our farm is by working in collaboration with our wildlife neighbors. So, the presence of all these species on our property thriving and engaging in the natural resource world that we operate in is critical to the success of the work that we're doing and the kind of farming that we are trying to demonstrate is not only better for the planet, but for the resources like water and air and soil but has great potential for Vermont's long-term working landscape economy. And the health of our wildlife is critical to this kind of farming that we are trying to popularize. So, for us making sure that our wildlife species populations are strong is really important. Larry Martin. So, you say your name and where is your town you're from in Vermont? I'm Larry Martin, from Vermont. And if you don't know where I was during the interest of my family, I'm going to show you my presentation. First of all, I want to commend the first one of my team for an excellent report. Well, I first heard about the possibility for the proposal that was done by the otter and the bobcat season. I started with my own observation and since that timeline I have seen 500 bobcats and had numerous pictures of cats on trail cameras but I've also seen 11 otters. I believe in my area that the otter and the bobcat may be at their peak population for my lifetime. So, based on that report from Chris I would ask the board to look for the extension for the bobcats and for the extension for the otters. Also, due to the information Chris gave us on how many cats I am. Thank you so much. Thank you. Go ahead from Alyssa Hoffman. Hi, I'm Alyssa Hoffman. I'm also from Huntington. I moved here in 2004 I'm sorry, in 1994 to farm. I've been a Vermont resident in the farming areas on and off for the last over 20 years. I farm with Sean on the same property. And just to add to what she said about the wildlife, we work I so appreciate the dedication to science in making these decisions. We work very closely with Sid Morris who is a wildlife ecologist, a hunter and a tracker and I know that there's valuable data through observation over time as she has done and we rely on that kind of data very heavily in how we design our food system and monitor all the energy transactions and nutrient exchanges that are occurring on our property in conjunction with our farm. And so I just want to promote other ways of seeking data other than through carcass collection and I know that that's a very, very important source for the information. I've got Bruce Baroppio. Bruce Baroppio, president of the Montrappers Association and then I'd like to urge the board to adopt a proposal. The Trappers Association at their last meeting the members unanimously asked me to ask the board to ask the department with making the Trappers survey mandatory. You've got to go online to get the license. You should be able to fill out the survey online easily. As far as the hundreds you'll have to figure that out for yourself. I'm glad. I'm interested in depending on Chris's work in which dynamic you use of either 687 animals or 2110 animals at 10% harvest rate for 687 or less than 1% at 2100 two weeks does not want to make a statistical difference at all and it would simplify things up very a lot. I'd like to have a person named Nikail He's left. Keep moving up the list, Maya She left as well. Kids handwriting. Like this little one. Yeshua? I'm going to speak really fast because Minnan is not enough. When I was 7 years old I went to COL in Florida. During one of the shows an otter came out on stage to open and deliver a can of Pepsi to one of the trainers. While most people were thinking about Pepsi, I sat in awe of these critical beings and realized their emotional and intellectual capacity was far beyond any of what I'm here to give you credit for. I am now 31 years old and I have 4 young children all under the age of 8. It's very likely that I will see another 100 years on this planet. But that is only if people such as yourself begin to listen to people like me. In fact, my children's grandchildren will live with the results of the decisions you make. Can you even fathom how many people you will affect and the extent to which your power reverberates to our future? I cannot. For me, this issue goes way beyond the question of trapping for trophies. The effects of their removal from the ecosystem is beyond our comprehension. And the cacophony of climate change is clear to me that even with all the rhetoric about greenness and sustainable of that, very little about our policies and lifestyles have changed, especially in America. Yet we see ourselves as leaders and innovators.  There is no denying that ecosystems everywhere are collapsing. I cannot fathom how both of us in this situation have come around right now. We have seen what the intent to be of this commitment. Policymakers, every word must catch up and make sense of the reality. If you think that's crazy, make such a research. I will point out that our neighbors only a few honest waiters in the United States will have to share a tape in a far more respectful position than we have here. In 2017, people in Ecuador rewrote their constitution by running around them. In doing so, they explicitly thought and established the right to make sure that they had the right to do so. I go in a minute. Now, you have disturbed this meeting. This is nothing. All life is sacred. Well, they are already in danger of further production of our population. I'm going to ask you to be in a different room. That's the most important room. Just give me a moment. No. We'll hear from everybody before any rule goes into place. Written comments, public hearings, other chance to say thank you sir, you had your chance. Yes, but my children had to leave. They had to leave. I will move. I do not need your camera. I will move. Rodney Campbell. Hi, I'm Rodney Campbell. I would like to ask the board to move these traditions forward. I believe the population of Bobcat and Otterton support the additional fat and pressure that there's not going to be a lot of animals for Bobcat. And there is a lot of Otter out there at this point in time. Thank you. I just want to make sure that the board gave attention to some written testimony that was submitted by a PhD in ecology. It actually throws a lot of water on science that was used for both Bobcat and the Otter population conclusions. There's some statistical analysis that was incorrect and a scientific method was brought into question. So I guess I would really like to make sure that the board gave attention to that. Additionally, despite the fact that Chris was dismissive of the wildlife action plan, that study and the decision to put those species into areas of greatest need meant that there were other pressures that are not taken into account and change in exposure to heavy metals, those kinds of things that will have a short-term, medium, and long-term impact on these two species. Thank you. Mike Covey. Hi, Mike Covey. I'm from Morningstown. I'm out of this position. I think that there's been such an influx of information sent to the board and everybody that there's no point in wasting a lot of time on it. What I would like to do is send the department to the board. I'd like to send the board for their diligence in hearing this petition. I look forward to seeing the results. Jenny Carter. Jenny Carter. The first thing I'd just like to say is that there's a misconception out here about the role of the legislature that they play in this. People should be aware while there is an extensive process ahead, the legislature plays virtually no role in this. There's a committee that will look to make sure that the regulations don't violate any other state statutes that they're acting within your authority, not whether it's good or bad or the data is good or bad. So people shouldn't think that the legislature really has very much of a role to play in this. Having said that, I hope that the board will not move forward on this petition, at least with respect to the otters and the bobcats. And given the shortness of time, the department did what it could with the data it had, but looking at the data, there are so many gaps in the data. I think the one thing we can all agree on is that we do need more data. There needs to be mandatory reporting for traffic. And as well as after taking time to use these animals. Thank you. John McCree, do you want to speak? Hi, I'm John McCree from Brooklyn. I'm in support of this petition. I believe the petition was submitted as one petition, but there's three components to it. And I urge the board to look at the three components and look at them independently. And maybe vote on one, vote on all of them, but you'll break it down and look at them independently. And secondly, when Chris was looking through his slideshow, he had some information up there on the bounty program with the bobcat. And it looked like there was a 20-year stretch or so where that bounty program was in place, and the hardest numbers are around 300, if you get an average of 300 hardest, they go over a course of 20 years. And if we could support that type of harvest over a 20-year period, if we're looking at a few extra animals to extend bobcat season a couple of weeks, 20 years should be enough time for the board to react, to do something or implement something to curb the hardest number. Thank you. Brennick L. Denzi? I'm Brennick L. Denzi and I'm the president and protector of wildlife and I'm going to echo a bit of what Jenny said. I also want to have a quote here with regard to the wildlife action plans. They are plans developed for conserving wildlife and habitat before they become too rare or costly to restore. And to quote Chairman Morris, he says in referring to the analysis, missing any reference that interprets an expansion of the seasons would have negative impacts on these healthy populations. Well, we couldn't agree more because there is a large segment of data that is missing in order for this board to approve this petition on live cats and otters. The cash per unit effort that's contained in the Trapper Mail Survey you have 20 to 30% of that data. The Trappers have not even returned their surveys yet we're going to consider expanding the seasons on these two animals, these two cherished animals for what? I'm not quite sure what problem we're seeking to solve. Pat Cole? It wasn't checked, as you know, but I want to give a chance to Pat and Steve. She is gone. Alright, thank you. I'm sorry, Henry Cole then? Hi, my name is Henry Cole. I'm from Danville. I own a wood lot in Albany. I have for 55 years. I can say happily I've never ever proposed a sign on there. I've always owned hundreds of trappers and fishermen and hikers. I talked this afternoon with an old friend from 1961 David Lawrence. John Kapustin knows him. John, David Lawrence hunted bobcat on the low ridge all the way down to Hyde Park for 30 years. He said he wore a pair of snowshoes out every year. He would go with two dogs. He'd be ahead of the dogs by the end of the day. But old John is 80 now. He's too late to come here and give him permission to speak to him as a dad. He said please do not extend the bobcat season. He said if you want to hunt them track them on snowshoes. He said don't trap them with open conifer traps and leg hole jaw traps. He said those should be outlawed in the United States. Eight states have outlawed them, but not in the United States. Thank you. These folks did not necessarily check they wanted to speak. I'm going to run down quickly. Jerry Huff. Thank you. I'm Jerry Huff from Rocksbury. I have a farm there and also another business in Vermont. We would like to have the Board to oppose just based on talking to various people in Vermont for several years. I just don't have a lot of confidence in the data, the reporting data. I think you need to start looking at online sources. A lot of trappers don't report things. I've been told by trappers that they caught an owl. They called Fish and Wildlife. They told them to throw it into the woods. They caught a duck. They got reported. Fish and Wildlife went there. They told them to throw it deeper in the woods and they had a lot of confidence in the data. I don't understand how the Board seems more like they're just arguing against the biologists to encourage the trapping. They don't seem like they're representing fairly all citizens. That's my point. Candace Shaper. Candace here. We've gone late. I'm sorry. Sorry. Trey Nichols. Do you want to speak? Thank you. I'm Trey Nichols. I'm from Colchester. I have to say that I oppose this petition. Traps, they pose serious dangers to the species that we are trying to start hearing from. When I see deplorable photos and videos of animals that are struggling to free themselves from traps and I see the hunters smiling and making jokes while standing next to the carcasses. You know, that is nothing short of bullying behavior. I have nothing to lose. Wildlife, they have everything to lose. Animals will continue to be enslaved by traps if the petitions will elongate the upcoming trapping season is approved. And until every animal is free, we are all victims. Until every animal is free, we must continue to take non-violent, direct action to use our power to help rather than hurt by force. I'll be with some pronunciation here. Jane Weissinger. Pat, thank you. Pamela Dean. Thank you. Pamela Dean. I'm a Dean of the Stop Bridge Vermont and I'm on the board of directors of N-TRAP and on behalf of myself and all our supporters in our organization we would like to report separately obtaining more data before making a decision as well as we would pose the petition of the United States. Thank you very much. Tim Hamilton. Tim here. David, I think it's Mark Treve. Thank you. Very good. I'm David Mark Treve. I hope the board will go ahead with these three presentations. I see it looks like the data supports we have strong and early increasing populations of these animals. It sounds logical that we could take some more without doing any harm to the animals that we do have. And from what I see I see more hours and podcasts in my lifetime now I heard it before. Thank you. I'm looking for Diana. I think it's Sawyer. I'm not quite sure. Diana wants to speak. Eric, is it Truman? Pat Mataperoffs? Bronte? Good. Yeah. I think the reasons that we'll be stated before I think Erin on the side of the conservation is what we're all about and what was shown today that is what I think the whole department is about and when I hear someone say what's the QX for animals it makes me wonder of course I don't think that's conservation and I don't think the people who say that are conservationists. Bruce Martin? Bruce Martin. Again thank you for the department for all the data they have put together and I think the board has actually brought us some good ideas of how trends are showing the population going up and the catch going lower as the month extends the part we could look into I don't think there's a good suggestion by the board and like many others I'm out of the woods a lot I see a lot of siren out there and I think again the population of bobcat and such a lot included is higher than something. Mark Shields? Mark Shields for the practical I don't know. I'm against the petition and I hope your mission statement is true it says you care about all the monitors and before I understand there isn't anyone on this board that is in the hunger on the track and I'm neither and I would like to speak some representation from somebody else and then the governor points them but you have some power to do something about that and I think then you would be reflective of all of the months I also feel the science is definitely not there for you to even consider stepping this petition is a new twist in my opinion and many others Rick Scoonover? Thank you I've been involved with water quality issues since I came back to Vietnam in 1967 I've watched their water quality in Vermont which ideally love degree, due to salt a variety of different things Otter are definitely a fish predator and their water warm up or salmon or trout are stressed I definitely think it's a good idea to trap a few more otters I don't think we're going to trap enough to make a lot of difference I feel it's pretty sad in this day and age about all the information out there and people still do not understand the football trap with all the information out there BNP process, International Association Fish and Wildlife Agency data out there scientifically obtained that it's really sad to see people are against the long and great deal of water I am definitely in favor of water, otter and the entire decision thank you Annagrid Pollard? I'm Annagrid Pollard, I have come a long way I grew up in Germany and I had experience of hunting during World War II hunting to eat and trying to preserve as many animals that we could find that could live and survive the carnage there and I have found up here in Vermont and I have responsibilities for 135 acres of woods and interesting just interesting areas all kinds of critters some I don't even know and my purpose is to make that as healthy and let them grow as much as possible I have 890 pieces of beavers they move and we visit occasionally and this is fine they no longer convert forests into wetlands and I said great I don't have to deal with that but I can't see tracking the animals especially now when we were when we are into climate change and we have no clue what's coming thank you Chris Knapp? Chris here? I have Chris Knapp and I want to thank the board for all the work they've done and the research that Chris did I want to point out just one thing if you look back in history when wildlife management was in the hands of the public and the legislature we almost wiped out all the animals I'm very much in favor of this petition and I hope the board will consider it and vote on it Jennifer Lovett? I'm a conservation biologist also looked at the critique of the assessment report by Dr. Wellman Bosworth who is a PhD ecologist and environmental consultant and he included in this unreading this kind of quote that the report provides absolutely no scientific foundation or evidence for any management decision related to bobcats or otters I also have read much of the 100,000 pages of the wildlife action plan whatever it's called and the bobcats are identified as a medium level species of greatest conservation need there are three levels and they are in the middle and I think climate change plays a real strong role in this because we don't know exactly what the population is here and we don't know what is going to happen to them with the predator price cycle thank you I really appreciate your listening this is going great Barry Laundrie? My name is Barry Laundrie I'm from Burlington, Vermont and I'm here to oppose the petition I think I'll focus briefly on bobcats because that's the part that is most important here I think I hope the board listens to the recommendations of the department we have a stable population we have increasing opportunities and successful trappers and trapping of bobcats we have low incidental takes during the two weeks of fisher season and we have a high uncertainty of what extending that bobcat season for two weeks I think there should be overwhelming evidence for this board to go to extend that season to double it and that evidence has not been presented today a lot of that is because of lack of data but without that information the board should not look forward thank you Jacqueline Carr? I oppose this petition also a professor of history at the University of Vermont and have to deal with my teaching voluntarily do so but with the devastation and violence has been perpetrated against the animal population on this continent for several centuries I don't really have anything else to add except to say that I oppose because the points that have been made collectively in our position reflect my theory thank you Catherine Lawler? Catherine here Tom Dibble? No Tom? Walt Cottrell? Also Peggy Larson? Larson, I'm a veteran I also have a master's degree in Apology and I also have a lot of degree out in the state prosecutor recently Canada has declared that animals are sentient the FBI has declared that animals are sentient because 29% of the inner family domestic abuse often involves animals like the icing on them I listen to people when you talk about these animals like the commodities like their sausage or a cabbage if you were doing this to dogs or cats your title 13 you would be facing a state attorney as a veteran I removed legs from animals who have been caught in traps because traps are not they don't discern they take other species and so the last cat I have a leg off she didn't survive she probably was in there three or four days that's fine, thank you I appreciate it Rosalind King? Rosalind here? Bonnie Mullen? I'll be very short most of what I would say has been said by chance I also was one of the kids that was the first week of the first year this camp was over in 1968 or nine I did very well there anyway I do oppose this motion I've been ambiguous about trapping from most of my development until recently nonetheless for the reasons people I have a degree in biology from UVM and good science is driven by good data and it's just a wonderful job for the dad of his guy he does not have a dad who needs and I think the air in the side of caution is in the department thank you Walter Krantz? no problem thank you and Travis Stenger? I'm an educator and working in water quality stream restoration water in terms of quality I wanted to make Vermont as great however I thought a little bit of the nearest on-fines I'd love the board to also be thinking about other broader future leading ideas are we really doing to argue on small amounts of animals are we basing this only on how many bobcats there happen to be this year why should we have significantly more in the future why do we need to stall out at only this amount the future of Vermont is going to be a clean green place that's what a lot of our children are going to want and we only need to sort of go for the deal of less than a quarter of a percent of our monitor average we respect the people but for them to take permanently parts of our shared resource or our shared quality of life I'd be like people with students people taking away other people thank you Erica, the tear is Erica here I'm just going to check for a quick I don't want to feel left out here I know some people in the last minute feel inspired but I'm just going to go by this list I believe it's everybody who has signed up to speak so thank you board for your patience and thank you public one is that I was concerned about versus the presentation as good as you can do there was one mention of a welfare animal in the whole two hours in the context of extending the oxygen and there was 11 mentions of profit in the market share so that was a dichotomy that was in trouble and then the other part is that to the gentleman who wanted to block tax even more is the block tax we want to see more and the last one is the nepotism that I'm seeing from some of the board members who are the people that are trappers it's very troubling to me and I think there's a big balance there so it's something we should all take into account thank you well we did leave a time when we'd have a sign up procedure I've seen you here for the whole evening I don't know what the problem is would you be the last one thank you I just wanted to say that that was a great presentation and thank you I've just been around for 16 years 16 years I'm an active maker kayaker I've never wanted to see a bobcat not once I've never seen a track I've never seen any I've never seen an otter I've never seen one otter I've never seen one I've never seen a lot of them and this gentleman over here said he just sourced somebody that's 12-3 because I'm not feeling that and also there's no way to represent the animal on his board there should be somebody representing the animals who's not an otter we have to not travel alright so we've got some business to do folks the board has made it the department has made it clear that they want you to hear the issues but tonight if we come forward with a proposal that we vote on as the opening petition the danger that of course is that we do something that's not articulated correctly that has flaws in it that as smart as we all think we are one at a time perhaps it would be better to tell the department what your wishes are and after that move forward with language that they create for you to vote on at our next meeting however I don't know what your wishes are so we can break this petition down into three parts if you're ready for this expediency I've heard from a couple of you to say that I'm not sure we're ready for this but I hear your comments on what you want to do thanks Cheryl I don't know what I'm going to say but I think before we even vote on the petition as it is I think we should kind of come up with some common guidelines as to what we're going to do about this effort just so it can be brought forward with any decisions that are going to be made on the three issues so the trapper survey do you want to do that first what do you think is that something we are going to cook up or something we should send the department back I view it as something a direct test to develop a proposal and I would ask the board too to consider you looking at trappers are you looking at trappers and honors Bill yes okay I'm looking at this petition as a three part petition I would like to separate it into three parts bobcat, otter colony traps personally I see no reason why this board cannot vote on colony traps tonight and get it done if you want to postpone on bobcats to discuss the mandatory survey which the BTA said they voted for I've got it written out on my notes mandatory survey or maybe a survey to be able to get something which you can work on I would ask the official wildlife department to come back in December with something on that that gives you October and November or no you don't you don't deer hunt that much so you go ahead and do it I care if I do not have that successful Mark what would be the result of pulling that colony trap out and predicting the language words might pass any of those four items we've got four items not to talk about the three in the petition one about mandatory reporting so I encourage you to think about all the changes that you want for their rule at one time let us come back with proper language and our thoughts would affect them to do that you don't want to have that rule opened up just called open again you can't go back to the first vote because once you do a first vote on any part of that rule it opens up a whole rule for the public process so I hear you saying building a colony trap issue is not going to be a huge conflict amongst the board and the public it sounds like we should do all this at the same time when we do it but if we don't vote one or the other we have to do a first vote we have to do a first vote to decide if we're going to keep going with the petition open for like a straw a straw grant just like we've done before a waterfall process or if it's here perfect or most you're not blocking that that gives us direction and how to carefully scrap the rule language keep in mind that unless I'm wrong about this nothing that we do will affect this coming winners trap issue so anything you do will be done in time to go into effect for next year I don't think there's a huge time crunching and moving some pieces there's any desire to split the bobcat into two different straw pools like Craig mentioned maybe a three year trial as opposed to a straight out change yes covering how about a quota to extend it just put a number around there and when you hit that number stop we had real problems with the quota I don't mean to direct to the board just for information we had real problems and we had a quota in the past because people would be harvesting animals after the quota had been met before they could be informed just for information you have ten days before you have to report your numbers ten days or forty eight hours once you cut your animal ten days to get a tag yes I don't know if this is the time two cents fourth year but concerning the entire thing here we have stirred up one hell of a hornet's nest for maybe two more bobcats a handful more of otters by the time the legislature may get done with us after this hornet's nest cools down we may have an entirely different board with anti hunters on it which I know the legislature would like to see I have been around that legislature a lot lately and they are an entirely different legislature than they were even five years ago there isn't a single hunter in the entire legislature that I know of so we have to watch what we're doing here for five extra animals in bobcat season and a handful of extra otters in otter season I'm not going to kick that hornet's nest so I am not going for it and I am not an anti hunter I'll clue you in but if you folks want to kick that can kick that hornet's nest go for it I'll be out here in about five months and I won't have to face whatever this board is going to look like yes thanks for your hand I ought to thank you to the straw hole pardon me I ought to thank you to the straw hole I ought to thank you to the straw hole I ought to thank you to the straw hole what I would say in response to Justin nobody asked him and whatever the board does I really don't think you need to take responsibility with what the legislature does they're separate animals they're going to do what they're going to do this year you have your positions you know we will do what we do so we do a straw hole on whether or not the department should work on a male survey male is probably the wrong word I mean I know maybe it should be a survey we're talking about trap a response survey and do the best you can on a survey what do we think including both they're taking fur bears they ought to be able to do a survey that's all there is to it oh sorry I just want to make sure that somewhere in there it makes it absolutely positive mandatory that if you did indeed put in a bobcat picture or otter that should be returned like being accessed but I don't know how you can kind of lead out but it's kind of like an all in nothing if the board directs us to come back with something like this we will come back to you with a couple of different ways of doing it options and strengths and weaknesses so they don't just be mandatory excuse me yes when you sit down at your computer and do your in my case renewal because I'm an old geezer for our new our new license first question on there did you take a fur bearer yes or no if you fill out yes I don't care if you shot it when you're a deer hunting you shot it when you're calling it or you trap it you fill out the surrogate no get them all you want information get it all yeah not to get into a long back and forth on something I'm not that knowledgeable a