Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to call the February 21st board meeting to order, please. Kevin is on vacation. Pat is on vacation, so I'm acting chair today. First order on the agenda is to approve January 17, 2018 meeting. Any questions? Any discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Aye. Abstained? January 17, meeting is passed. The second item on the agenda is going to be public promise. Did everyone have questions? Absolutely. I'm not sure if this will overlook, but I didn't get a committee. I just didn't get it. I didn't get a draft of last week's meeting. May I put the board? Maybe. I think it should have been, I apologize if I can give one to you right now. I read it on the department's website, but normally we get a draft, and I can see it. I did not receive it as well.  Yeah.  All right. Can I do the same thing to you? Any other questions or discussion? OK. So we're going to do public comment. Has everyone had a chance to sign up that wanted to speak? We do a two-minute public comment first since this is a court working meeting and not a public hearing. OK. So we have Lindsey Vue. Are you speaking in public comment also? OK. Renee Callaghan? No. I crossed it out. You don't want to speak? Troy Kilburn? Hello. I would normally speak, but I'm so used to not being able to. I didn't realize that we can do that now. I think it's a good change. Gaudi Blue? Gaudi Blue. Yeah, that'd be me. How about honorable lifetime, then? I guess we're here tonight because we're hearing there's a proposal that's going to come up in Congress to either end loose-hunting or severely cut it back. And I think my guides would agree with us, and we spent hundreds of hours in the summer in the woods. I think you'd done an outstanding job with loose-hurt. You knocked the population down enough that what we're seeing is guides and hunters. The ticks are dying, dying, dying. They're leaving. There's no fee. And I don't think it would be wise to cancel that and to end that because all we're going to do is go back into a fight, having to bring all that back up again, go through legislation and try and put mousses back on board. Cuts, maybe, but I don't think it would be wise to abolish it and end it. Thank you. Thank you. William Andrews, in a few minutes, right? Yes. So this has to do in part with ticks, as the gentleman mentioned. I have to say that I've found literature throughout New England actually says that mousses die-offs related to the bloodmills of the ticks contradicts what we think. But first of all, I want to start by saying that last week in the Bennington Banner Commission reporter was quoted as saying that we, the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, don't usually make decisions that are not based on science, which is comforting. The Scram Center, which is based in Bennington, Vermont, and New York, which has been set up specifically for the purpose of studying Lyme disease, was quoted in 2017 as saying that we have an epidemic out of control discussing Lyme disease. Over half of all of the mice that were tested tested positive for Lyme disease. I think that's important to bring into account because of the fact that our number one predator in the wild that's helping us fight Lyme disease are foxes. There's no reason to consider not putting a moratorium on foxes. It's predicted, according to Felicia Kiesing, who's the environmental ecology expert at Bard College out in New York, that 2017, 2018 record years, she was right about 2017. The number one reason that we had a record year for Lyme disease based in 2017 was because, her quote, high mouse populations. Illinois Department of National Resources, over 60% of a fox diet is mice. So if you take into account of the fact that Red Fox average lifespan is three years and they eat upwards of 5,000 mice a year, that means that in the course of one fox's wild life in the state of Vermont, over half of the ticks they have Lyme disease, that means they've consumed 15,000 mice, half of which have Lyme disease. If anybody in this room knows anybody or has a family member that has Lyme disease, it's a vicious battle. I think the only helper that we have in the wild, coyotes and foxes, you really should take into consideration what all the mantis want, not just the trappers. Thank you. Pat Radar? Well, I'm here also about the potential that there's a moose proposal to get shot down for the moose hunt. And to be in all fairness, I guide for moose, but I do know one thing. And that is, we attended the meeting at the board that the game department had a month ago. And at that time, they were cautiously optimistic with the way things are going. We have an ongoing moose callering study of which we do not have any data coming back yet on that. I would suggest that we do as the state was saying and cautiously, optimistically, we go forward with the moose hunt. If we wish to choose to lower permits, that's fine. We can do that. But one of the best methods that we have found in the other states have found to knocking down this tick problem is by actually going to go against all common sense to have a thinner population, rather than a thicker one, where the ticks can be spread from one to the other. And the last I knew I have not seen in the big woods a fox. I don't know where they're going to be eating the mice. I can tell you that I don't see them there. I don't see the tracks. Which is why I think there should be more. I don't believe we're not bantering back and forth, please. Anyways, I do believe I should continue. I don't believe a more or a tone would be in the very sense. And that we should just stay the course and follow scientific methods not emotional. Anyone else that needs to sign up? OK. Thank you for your time. Sorry, I didn't realize that. Why don't you at the end have a comment? I just walked in. I'm sorry. Yes. If you'd like to. I do know. I just have a quick statement. Your name, please. My name is Kristin Cameron. Kristin Cameron. And so I just wanted to say that I'm concerned about our decapitated moose populations. And I would like to urge the board to stop the moose hunt and give them a chance to recover, if it's hopefully not already too late. From my read of the moose proposal, which is hopefully, I got the little leak. It seems like there's an unwarranted attention that's based on opportunities to hunt and the 12,000 pounds of meat that will be provided. And I also see that there's a clear undercurrent to me about wishful thinking and hoping that 14 hermit aren't going to impact the species. And I just wonder, do you really want to make matters worse by allowing them to become as strong as the pervage? I understand as often what happens. And I urge you to err on the side of caution and just take a break from permission and moose permits this year. However, I'm realistic. And I know what hiatus is. I'll be fairly unlikely with this board because of my prioritization of hunting and pacifying hunters for years and desires. So I'd like to offer another suggestion. And my suggestion is that if the board exists on the 2018 moose hunt, then I ask you at least to count any wounded moose toward the baglanet. So any moose that a hunter shoots but fails to recover would count. They do this in other states, I'm told by Mark Scott. And so this just seems like one small step that can ensure that only the number of moose that the board decides is acceptable to kill are the only ones that are killed by a bull or an arrow. And moose just are a really important and really iconic animal in this state. And they're also an economic driver of wild hunters. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. OK. Can I have everyone? OK. Thank you very much. The third item on our agenda is going to be the lion disease petition. So Ms. Beal, would you like to present your position? We have 10 minutes. All right. My name is Lindsay Nailet in the Mooseville-Moyle County. And to make one story short, my self and my husband spent a great deal outside as well in the woods on the mountains and whatnot, especially in warmer months. We have just finding a large increase in the amount of ticks that we find in ourselves. We have two dogs, friends, family. It's pretty well known in the state. And that prompted myself to do research in why is there a rise in the tick population and why is there a large amount of lion disease cases and how can we better protect ourselves? And that is why I am here today. Based upon my research of the most rapidly rising lion disease cases and other tick-borne diseases and new research regarding the increase of mice population and activity in connection to the decrease of key Roman predators, such as foxes, I have submitted a petition to the board requesting a moratorium on the recreational and commercial trapping and hunting of foxes, health, combat, lion disease, and other tick-borne illnesses.  Tick and lion disease is an enormous health concern that must be addressed immediately. An efficient and cost-effective solution is to work with mother nature rather than against it, and that means allowing foxes to prey on white-footed mice to infect the majority of ticks that feed on them. Supported by evidence that I had for work provided to the board, I do have hard copies that we would like to look at further. This proposal does have the strong potential to reduce human and animal exposure to disease-discontracted white ticks who feed, once again, heavily on white-footed mice who are a major post. Along with the petition, I did submit three letters of support from people who suffer from lion disease, and as it was mentioned, it could be incredibly harmful and change their lifestyles. And also, I do have a list of over 800 Vermont signatures that do support this petition and their comments. And just some facts to kind of back up everything I'm saying. Lion disease has spread at an alarming rate in our state according to the Vermont Department of Health in 2015. Vermont had the highest rate of reported lion disease cases in the United States. 763 confirmed cases of lion disease were accounted for in 2016, that was confirmed cases. Reported by the tick-borne disease program in Vermont in 2017, Vermont was one of the top two states with the highest instances of lion disease. In March of this past year, it was reported that over 50% of ticks surveyed in Vermont tested positive for lion disease. According to another study by the Infectious Disease Department at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center, upwards of 63% of ticks were infected statewide with at least one tick-borne disease and some caring two at a time. Wildlife specialists suggest there is evidence that there is a link between increase of mice populations and their activity and the decline of predators that plant mice, especially foxes. Although ticks can get infected with lion disease and other tick-borne diseases from other animals, the bull and this being more and more found and approved to back it up are infected not by deer but in fact by mice. In fact up to 95% of ticks that feed on them and are responsible for infecting the majority of ticks carrying lion disease in the northeast. And everything I'm saying, I do have notes of where I found the sources of your questions where I found it. Where mice tend to stay in hiding and wander less when there is a larger presence of predators such as foxes. When mice run less, it means there's a less likelihood to become a host for ticks. Predators can drastically lower the number of ticks feeding on mice, which calls for the much-preserved appreciation and protection of these particular foxes in this case. In addition to these facts, this petition is one of the most safe, sensible and effective policies that can be adopted for several more reasons. There would be no use of harmful chemicals and win-win for public safety and the environment. There's a lot that goes into that, but to sum it up, for example, the executive director of Beyond Pesticides, that tick repelling chemicals can cause acute and chronic health problems, kill bees, harm wildlife in many ways I can't go into, such as our own pets and fish and our waterways. They can also damage surface water and groundwater. We would be allowing Mother Nature to create healthy ecosystems by balancing predators to great numbers, which is vital for all animals and their habitat. Foxes are a key species to help maintain a healthy ecosystem by managing prey population, which means their cousins is much more valuable alive than dead. The Vermont Fish and Wildlife has incomplete and poor data on the number of foxes who are hunted or trapped each year. In fact, I worked with a statistician who looked over the furbearer's population trends and estimates that they personally sent to me, and they concluded that the great fox population is actually on the decline, which is, of course, very concerning. Essentially, the population data that I was sent provided no biological insight to game managers for making wildlife management decisions and regulations. Also, foxes killed under Vermont's nuisance wildlife permission provision go entirely unreported and those numbers could be significant. Foxes already face numerous threats, so there's a few human-caused mortalities to cars, domestic dogs, they also fishers, eagles who prey on fox kits. It does not make sense to add another threat to the fox population. In addition, our planet, as we can see every day, is rapidly changing habitat loss, warmer temperatures, unpredictable weather patterns, less food sources, and in support of this petition was a man named Dr. Sifast, who has a PhD in wildlife and fisheries and a professor of wildlife ecology, and his thoughts include a different viewpoint in regards to the validity of current scientific data on harvesting animals and the sustainability. Yes, there's most likely that trapping will not ruin the survival of the species. However, all the information that we have in this time is about the effects of passive animal behaviors and the effects of humankind. On wildlife is based on the past 150 plus years of evidence. The planet was very, very different in the past, even 15 years ago, and I've heard more and more times that, oh, 1800s, 1900s, 40 years ago, a lot of that stuff is not relevant today and it is poor data to rely on. Policies of any kind, including trapping and hunting, policies cannot be based strictly on evidence gathered from decades past because that data quite simply is becoming irrelevant. For example, killing 100 foxes today does not have the same impact as killing 100 foxes 50 years ago, primarily because regeneration possibilities are now clouded and uncertain. Overall intentions, such as culling the deer population, which I know is kind of a big one that's been discussed, coding lawns are using body sprays that contain killing pesticides have made minimal differences in less than the spread of ticks and ultimately ends up being a short-term solution. Interventions like protecting foxes or factoring the habitat needs of particular predators into land use decisions to advance the population is getting to the root of the problem, as opposed to quick fixes, which I feel happens a lot. Helping the sport killing of foxes may have tremendous and life-saving results for the health and safety of Vermont residents. I personally have known pets, my dog got contracted with Lyme disease and it's kind of nasty for a while. I personally know people who have contracted Lyme disease and it can be incredibly debilitating. Regression killing of foxes that serve less than 1% in the state must not take priority over the health and interest of the general public. Taking a modest evidence-based step, I must stress evidence-based step to assist our state in arresting the rapidly rising rate of tick-borne disease is well worth the time and effort of the board. And I just am allowed to touch base on something else that publicly. You have one minute. I know it was mentioned that you don't see foxes in a while. Well, that should be an immediate red flag that, wow, these predators are their numbers, not only maybe for Lyme disease, but should be able to get their populations back to a healthier number. So that's kind of an immediate red flag for me that their populations are not really healthy. If you're out there for hundreds of hours and not seeing them, that's not a good sign. So thank you, that's it. Thank you. So where would you like to proceed with this? So the question I think for the board is whether they want to take this petition up at this point or table it for a future time when we are looking at hunting or trapping regulations related to foxes. Anything you want to add to that? Yeah, the only thing I would add is I want to give you a lot of information that needs to be before you to do that. What we've been wanting to do when the board has had that interest is to command and give a formal scientific presentation on the whole issue of Lyme disease, how it relates to ecosystem health, exotic, predetermined relationships. So we've been wanting to do that for some time. So what I'd ask the board, regardless of what you want to do with the petition, that I think we'd like to probably come back at some point, dish calendar year. I'd hate to put a date on it just because of so many things Stafford would do for perhaps I'm thinking of late summer, early fall and at my staff give a presentation on ticks, Lyme disease, white tail deer, white foot mice, predators, ecosystem health, exotic, the whole picture to do that. We did a real quick look at the petition, obviously, it's complex. I think you hear lots of different sound bites from scientists out there. I'd rather ask you a thorough scientific response to the board, just so you're educated. The board's asked for this. And if there's anything that we heard at the last three, what it means to me on most was there's a lot of questions, a lot of human fear, a lot of misunderstanding about ticks. I mean, people don't even know that there's three on most ticks, you know, when they're ticking deer ticks. So, you know, we'd like to have that discussion and try to educate the board a little bit about that later on, regardless of what you do. You know, on this petition. So, does anyone have any questions? I'd like to make a motion. We table it until at such time that the department comes back with a proposal for the board to look at it. Anyone second? I'll second. Any discussion? I just have one question. First word on the petition, moratorium. Are we being asked to stop it indefinitely or for a certain time period? Are you asking me? Yeah. Moratorium does not mean it definitely. It means basically, yes, you stop it and then maybe you have exact definitions but probably a good safe, I'm assuming at least three to five years to get in order to get a really good sense and collect data in order to see is this effective? Is it working? So I would have to have a specific and reasonable, you can't just do it for a few weeks and expect to get back really thorough and good research from it. So it's not indefinitely, but it would ultimately, it would be preferable, but it is not indefinitely. Question, if you're marking me up with this, how are the red fox numbers and do they not compete with coyotes for the same resources? So I'm not sure. Even the resources are high. Coyotes get in full with red fox numbers. So I actually played on them higher coyote numbers in some locales for the red fox. They'll tend to cohabit the same area, although you'll find from the research, they'll tell you that the fox will try to avoid the coyotes usually. It gets more critical, resources are limited, but we're not worried at all about red fox numbers or population size in the state, and why we feel that we're dealing with limited harvest, but they're doing well, this statewide. Thank you. Where are the habitats there? Great. Yes, I would ask Mark or Cedric to correct me if I'm wrong, but my observations are down that since coyotes came and established themselves in just about every bit of suitable habitat in Vermont, fox numbers and bobcat numbers have been seriously diminished. The other thing I've noticed in recent years, I spend a lot of time in the woods and I have quite a few trail cameras in the woods. I get more fox pictures and see, I have fox tracks in my yard every day when there's snow that can indicate a fresh track. I have more fox pictures than anything else on my trail cameras. There, the pattern I've seen from, I usually know of about four or five active dens each spring, foxes have chosen, I think they've adapted to the presence of coyotes so that now they're denning quite often the dens I've known about, I'm talking about probably four or five a year for the last several years that are close proximity to humans within 300 feet of houses, camps, elk buildings. I know I always used to read that they'll den within 300 feet of water. Well, that's oftentimes the case too, they're near Brooks or around the lakes where I live, but I think the main limiting factor is the presence of coyotes on the landscape and foxes are somewhat marginalized by that. I look at what will hunting and trapping of foxes is done, probably in areas where there is fairly good fox populations are a good control factor as far as preventing rabies, mange and dismember to manage those populations where there may be. And I'm not enough coyotes to limit the fox population, but I think their range has been marginalized by coyotes and they'd rather deal with the stresses of living close in proximity to humans instead of living in close proximity to coyotes from just the patterns that I've noticed. Craig, I'm not going to respond and I'll do technical questions in that, but I think that's why we'd rather come back at a later time. It's a pretty complex situation in research. We've done a little bit in Vermont back in the 90s, 80s, 90s, but a little bit limited, but people have looked at all these different interrelationships and it's tied in with habitat and all of us know how a really successful habitat is, young forests have declined here in the state, that's a factor as well. But we're concerned, you know, foxes, bobcat and coyotes are all living on the landscape of Vermont in state-wide and healthy, so we'll talk to that point and a later point to the board. Yeah, I just like that. I think that's kind of like they're being more displaced by coyotes than, I think, hindered by it, per se. But the other thing I'd like to add, too, is I mean, the reason I motion the table is I just don't feel personally that we've got enough data from the department to make the correct decisions. I just would like to see more of that. Mark, I was just going to follow up to Craig's comments and just the displacement. If there's any way you can include, we want a line piece, locations, I know CDC has a map out there kind of where the cases are popping up, that may be helpful as well. It's okay. Relative to urban rural. Push. These questions are helpful. So since we get the presentation again, I mean, we've got them recorded and what they may do is share those back with you, too, because it may generate some other questions you may have for our staff to look at. Do you have a time frame as to when you'll be back with the board? Yeah, I mean, you know every time I said that, I got in trouble, but I did say late summer. We've been wanting to do this for some time. You know, it's big, that's true, I think. We all get affected. We even affect hunters out there all the time, you know. So, yep, that's all reasonable. I hate to pin the exact month because anything I found is things can pop up. Well, you are not expected late summer. You did better than that, Mark. You didn't say which summer. Yeah.  Any other questions? Do we have any data available, say, from our Trappers Association for auctions on how many foxes helps? Sure, we'll pull them together. We'll pull them together. They're not like some of the animals that have to be reported to a warden or tagged or... We'll pull together everything we have from the surveys and from other data records. You don't have that. I think I've seen figures on like how many foxes helps were for sale at the auction there. We don't have to add to that or something, but I think that information would be, it just seems to me that the annual take on foxes is not as a detrimental effect on the numbers. The problem with the fur auctions is they're not guaranteed that they're taking back year. A lot of times a Trapper, correct me if I'm wrong, Bill will hold the pellets until the prices change. So you might have a huge update, but it might be because the fur prices are too high. I would agree with you on raccoons and mink and probably much rats, but I think most everybody gets rid of their foxes and coyotes. Anyway, we'll pull together whatever we have. So if anybody has any other questions that you'd like to mark to kind of investigate, we'll make up questions. So we have a motion on the forum now to table the petition. I'm going to kind of hold mark by the fire and I'd like it by the September meeting, okay? So I'd like to have a presentation by the September meeting. So that way there's ample time, it's about six months, and get everything up and leaving. So again, there's a motion and we have a second. Any other discussions? Any other questions? Am I allowed to? No, you're not. Oh, thank you very much. All right, so we're going to do this as a show of hands. So anyone, everyone, whoever's in action, can go around the ground. In agreement to table the petition to the September meeting, David? Hi. Hi. Oh, no, I would rather take no action. I believe that this, I think this is a long one here. Hi. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm with Craig, no. Yes. No. So the guess is had it? Three, yep, that's just how it looks like. Three no's and one, two, three, eight. Okay, so it's going to be two of us at the September meeting. Eight to table, is it? Yeah. What was that again? Was it eight to table? Eight, eight, three, yes, correct? Yes. All right.  So the fourth agenda is this. Great work. All right, well, good evening, everybody. For folks that don't know, I'm Adam Miller and Fish Culture Operations Manager for the Lawn Fish and Wildlife Department. I wish we had fish hatchers on the health program. And I'm here tonight to talk to you, the folks on the board, remember, early on when we were going through the big fish regulations review framework and talking about it, we did a hot thought exercise and we asked board members to provide some feedback on some educational topics that we could come back to the board and talk about with regards to big fish. One of the things that rose to the top of the list, was geographic areas of risk. We addressed that in our last board meeting. And the next thing that came up on the list as far as popularity was a comprehensive evaluation of fish pathogens and aquatic nuisance species. So hoping to make this a relatively quick and painless meeting for all of you. I'll set my timer so we make sure that we're not gonna go over time. Can people see that, okay? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Adam, you will also review the LSB. Yes. Yep, I already emailed Will and Will will provide that to the rest of the board. I'll do it. So just to kind of recap where we've left off before, the overall goal of the Vermont bait fish regulations review team is to review the current Vermont bait fish regulations with a very strong likelihood of coming back to the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Board with a revised proposal in the future to regulate bait fish in a manner that's in the best interest of the public but still provides an adequate level of protection to Vermont's fishery resources. So that's kind of where ethos as we go through all of this. And I have a number of purposes for tonight's meeting. The first purpose is just to talk about work done to date regarding fish pathogens. And many folks have probably heard of the fish pathogen VHS. It's an acronym for viral hemorrhagic septicemia. It's a pretty nasty fish pathogen. So not just looking at VHS, but fish pathogens in general in the Northeast. Additionally, we wanted to talk about research done to date regarding aquatic news and species. We love acronyms in state government. So A and S is what I put on here. And also to discuss a recent enforcement action that was taken. I don't know if everyone on the board has seen there is a recent enforcement action that was taken regarding the presence of a non-native fish species that showed up in a batch of imported fathead minnows from Arkansas. And then finally, just to gather feedback from the board, any kind of questions or concerns you have as we're going through this process. And really just kind of hear from you as to what you're looking at, what you think you're going to focus more on and what we need to include in our framework. So without further ado, we'll hop into fish pathogens. And I just wanted to kind of put out there a number of fish pathogens that are out there in the environment. Some of them are like the equivalent of the common cold. Others of them are not the common cold. They're a lot more serious. So we kind of love these, the serious fish pathogens into a number of different categories. There's emergency fish pathogens, which aren't currently located in the Northeast. I'm kind of backing out of Vermont into the Northeast in general. These are things that haven't been found in the Northeast yet. And they have a high potential for causing massive die-offs of fish. There's limited pathogens, which might have been detected in some sub-basins of the Northeast. However, they can't have adverse effects on hatchery and wild stocks of fish, which includes a lot of events that can cause massive mortalities. Limited bee pathogens, which have been detected in specific areas of the Northeast, but whose range is kind of geographically limited, or is undetermined. And we still feel that these fish pathogens are dangerous enough that we need to take efforts to reduce and restrict the movement and definitely keep the spread from going out. And then there's restricted fish pathogens. And these are pathogens that have the potential to cause epizoolotics under very specific circumstances. And some of these things we don't necessarily know everything about. So this is kind of like another realm of pathogens that are out there. So as far as those different pathogen categories, you can see this is something that was pulled out of guidance from the Northeast Fish Health Committee, which is a group that Vermont belongs to. And a number of other state and federal fish and wildlife organizations have kind of worked to kind of work up these different diseases. We've got your emergency pathogens, the really heavy hitters, the limited A pathogens, kind of the next step down, limited B and restricted. And these are still pathogens that we're concerned about. There are other, below the restricted that not necessarily is concerned about. So we don't have any emergency pathogens that have shown up in Vermont, and we're happy about that. As far as things go for limited A pathogens, we do have a history of having whirling disease. Many folks have probably fished the Batonkill River before, the Batonkill River continually test positive for whirling disease. We actually believe that that was brought in to the state of Vermont through a fish stocking from New York state DEC that ended up fish moving into into Vermont waters that have whirling disease. As far as limited B pathogens go, we have a number of different limited B pathogens. Infectious Pancreatic necrosis was around, it was a long time ago that we detected that. They haven't detected it recently. Orginal Paz virus, bacterial kidney disease, and ferroculosis. Those are some of the fish pathogens that we've seen on the limited B. And then a few of the restrictive fish pathogens, Lake Trout Herpes virus and Lake Champlain. Isosic lymphocercoma, it's like a Northern Pike Herpes virus. Some folks might have seen that in Lake Champlain, or in Lake Champlain, Northern Pike. And then heterosporice has been detected in Yellow Perch and Lake Champlain as well. So, a million dollar question is, is there a threat of moving fish pathogens by moving fish? So here's just some examples, but I'm giving these examples from trout, not necessarily from bait fish. And one of the reasons we're giving that perspective from trout is because there's just been a lot more research that's been done with trout and trout diseases. Trout aquaculture's been going on for a long time. So they've been able to study and get a good recording of what happens with these diseases. And Tarek Redmouth was actually the only president or president in Idaho in the 1950s. Now it's actually spread worldwide. So we're talking in a relatively short period of time, there is a fish disease that essentially through the movement of fish, the culture practices, moving around the world has kind of moved and is all throughout the Northeast and I guess beyond just this continent. Also, whirling disease showed up in the Northeast. And a good example of that is just a brown trout where originally it came from Europe. Many folks know that brown trout came from Europe. And through the fish culture program, for example, in Pennsylvania, they ended up transferring fish to Connecticut. And Connecticut actually traced that disease of whirling disease that showed up in their fish hatcheries to fish that were transferred from Pennsylvania. And then I also mentioned the New York stocking of fish into the Battenkill River that had whirling disease. Adam, can I ask a question? Sure. About whirling disease, can you just give the definition and what impact it has on the fish? Sure. So there's kind of two things that can happen. One is they can actually die. And then the other is they can become carriers to spread the disease. I would actually defer to Tom Jones, who's kind of our fish pathologist to kind of talk about, maybe Tommy, you can talk about the impacts of whirling disease. Yeah, I think from the concept of whirling disease, in the Northeast, there's been a lot of reports in states like Pennsylvania and New York is whirling disease is present in quite a few waters. And it's not major impacts like it is in some of the western states like Montana and Idaho. So it could be there in very, very low stages, chronic men, but it could be just the opposite of the conditions or right cause some fairly substantial mortality in those populations. So I'd say like low severity, high severity. I don't know the exact reason and I'm not sure the researchers know the exact reason on why it's not causing real critical mortality in the Northeast states like it has in the western states. So then kind of how does this relate back to bait fish? And really the interesting thing is just, we already know through the movement of fish and trout that are a pretty heavily researched species that movement of disease can happen through just transferring of fish. When it comes to bait fish, there are a number of pathogens that are specific to bait fish and can have serious impacts to fish populations that not only include minnows, but also can include whatever fish prey on those minnows. So it's interesting, there's a lot of stuff out there that I'll admit like the scientific world just hasn't caught up with all the research out there as far as these new fish pathogens that are showing up at bait fish, which is a risk. So one of the things we've talked about, I think it's really, we've got a lot of great feedback through our public discussion sessions on bait fish. It's just this idea of the movement of water. It's not just bait, but it's the movement of water that's also a concern. Tim had an excellent example the other day when we had our bait fish meeting where you can essentially put on a white t-shirt and say your t-shirt is certified clean, but then if you go and you roll in a mud puddle, you're probably not gonna go hop into your bed, but even though you had a certified t-shirt on then, because you've been in contact with other things in the environment, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's certified later. So this idea of movement of water and how it stands for concerns. Mud puddle. Yeah. I think Tim had a little bit. There's a construction term. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, the idea that many of these viruses, these parasites, zebra mussel villagers and things like that, they're microscopic and they can be in the water. And it's not necessarily something someone can just go look and be like, yep, I definitely know that there's zebra mussels here. We do know that VHS is still a concern. It's a cold water loving virus. Usually likes to strike in the spring when water temperatures are nice and cold. Death usually occurs from VHS just from hemorrhaging. And basically the fish hemorrhages so much and the body begins to shut down, the organs begin to shut down. And there is no successful treatment. It's not like we can chemically treat these fish for any kind of, we can't give them medicine or fix them. Over 68 different fish species are known to be infected by VHS. What's interesting is it doesn't just include bait fish. It also includes some invertebrates like crayfish and leeches and things like that. Emerald shiners and this is where kind of bait fish come into play. Emerald shiners, which many folks know are the very popular bait fish species have been implicated as a major carrier of VHS. And then the interesting thing is when VHS doesn't necessarily kill a fish, we talked about this as like whirling disease, if something doesn't necessarily get killed, it doesn't mean that they don't have the virus. They can actually be a carrier for the virus and then shed that into the water or pass it on another fish. One of the things that's particularly alarming to me is there's some research going on at Cornell University. The researcher's name is Rod Getchell. And his research is actually showing that round gobies have a very high prevalence of holding the VHS virus. So they might not necessarily die but they can harbor VHS in them. And what's particularly alarming when you think about that is round goby haven't necessarily shown up in Lake Champlain. However, they're actively moving through the New York canal system. And we know that Champlain is connected through the canal system right now that gobies are kind of invading all these different areas. And it's just something I feel like we definitely need to keep a finger on the pulse on if they are truly this harbouring species of VHS. So I wanted to just kind of go through it and just take a case example of VHS and kind of where we stand and where things kind of started out and have moved through the northeast in the Great Lakes. And I'm not gonna go into, like we won't go into a ton of detail on this, but basically starting in April 2005, there was tens of thousands of fish that ended up dying in Lake Ontario. Shortly thereafter, there was a detection in Lake St. Clair in Michigan. Then within, I guess, just within a year, VHS was detected in the St. Lawrence, Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, included tens of thousands of dead fish. Also, things like musky, 40, 50 plus inch musky were washing up dead on the shores in the St. Lawrence River. So definitely a concern. This is really interesting, Kinesis Lake, several hundred walleye died there. And initially you kind of think of VHS because this is like a Great Lakes problem, right? But Kinesis Lake within just over one year was a lake that is still hydrologically connected to the Great Lakes, but it definitely wasn't like a Great Lake that was actually showing mortality. In September 2006, Lake Ontario and Lake Erie had an 11 additional species that contracted VHS. Shortly thereafter, Lake Huron. Then you have Lake Michigan. This is really interesting, Bud Lake, actually ended up contracting VHS. And the interesting part about Bud Lake is actually the fact that Bud Lake is hydrologically disconnected from the Great Lakes. So this idea of the pathogen moving through the water to actually get into that water body, it wasn't there, there wasn't that connection. And actually what was implicated at that time was actually emerald shiners being brought over from the Great Lakes and used as bait in Bud Lake. Lake Butte-Demore and Lake Winnebago. And right now, just to give us a snapshot, we started out in 2005. So we're seeing a lot of these happen. I mean, we're just talking in two years time there's all these water bodies. And we're talking hundreds and hundreds of miles this pathogen has been popping up and fish species have been affected. Skinny alleys. We started seeing it in the Seneca, that Coyote canal, Water Salmon River. There's also a farm pond in Niagara County, New York, Ontario, new areas of Michigan, place of Ohio, Lake Superior. So now all Great Lakes are now infected with the virus. So we moved on a little bit more. We're in January of 2010. Skip forward, four years actually, there wasn't a significant detection. The Root River in Wisconsin ended up showing up positive. Cuyuga Lake in Lake St. Clair. And that was the most recent. So just an idea to give you an idea of the massive spread that can happen. And we're talking all this in a window from 2005 to 2017 that we had a spread of VHS. One of the things that's interesting so we can't necessarily make some sort of assumption that it's causation, but you can see here this is just a graph of the new waters that were affected by VHS on a yearly basis. And one of the interesting things to just take a look at is these are when the implementation of bait fish regulations started becoming, they're promulgated in different areas. So it's just something interesting. I mean, like I said, we can't necessarily say that this is a causation and this is definitely has affixed everything. That's why there's no detections. But it's just some interesting data to take a look at. So I also wanted to talk about the evaluation of aquatic new species that are in the Northeast. We know that through our research on the date, A&S is definitely a real threat. There's impacts to fisheries resources. There's impacts to recreation. There's a definite diminished economic return that's out there and then there's also human health concerns. Anyone who stepped on or slipped on and cut themselves on zebra mussels knows that for sure. There are many fish pathogens and aquatic new species inside and outside of Vermont. Some of the imminent threats out there around Gobi, New Zealand mud snails are all outside of Vermont. But we also still do have aquatic new species that are present that are already in Vermont. They're live zebra mussels, Asian clium, spiny water flea. And I know we talked about this earlier when we talked about geographic zonation approaches. But Champlain is definitely our highest risk vector. There's already approximately 50 aquatic invasive species that are present in its hydrologically connected with waters that have different aquatic new species and fish pathogens out there. That said, there are other risk vectors out there in Vermont. It's not just Lake Champlain. Lake Bozina is an example. Lake St. Catherine, Lake Carmi. So this is a map I wanted to share with everyone. This is the Vermont DEC aquatic new species map. You'll see there, there's a number of water bodies and rivers and streams. The ones that are in red are actually some sort of a positive detection of an aquatic new species. Ones in green are just please disregard that. It's just the ones in red. So just some key notes to look at. Presence of ale life have been noted in Lake Champlain. Lake Carmi, which is recent detection at Lake St. Catherine. Zebra mussels have shown up in Lake Champlain. Lake Bombazine, Asian clams in Lake Bombazine. As spawning waterfully has been in Lake Champlain. So some of the imminent threats that are out there. For A&S, Round Coby is probably the most imminent threat. They're currently spreading through the New York locking canal system on their own volition. They're already kind of well established in the Richelieu, Hudson, and Mohawk systems. Koalaga mussels are a close cousin to Zebra mussels. New Zealand mud sails are also something else that's docking on the door. And although it's not an immediate threat, Asian carp are also out there. I don't know how many folks have heard about Asian carp. They're the ones that when people are driving, they're kind of jumping out and there's, they can cause some pretty serious impacts. Not just the people that are voting, but also to altering the food web and the ecosystem out there for other fish species. And one of the really interesting things about them is they actually, they actually, when they're small, when they're very young, they actually look almost identical to a gizzard shad, which can be a popular bait fish species. And then the fish pathogens, definitely the most imminent fish pathogens that's out there, reiterate, we have not detected VHS and link shampooing. We maintain fish health testing throughout the state of Vermont and we haven't detected it yet, but we feel like VHS is kind of an imminent threat that's out there just because of given the hydrologic connectivity of Lake Champlain to other waters like the St. Lawrence River and then through the Champlain Canal system to other VHS infected waters. So any questions so far on fish pathogens or aquatic nuisance species? Great. So recently folks might have noticed there was an enforcement action that was taken with regards to mosquito fish and the important fat adminos. To hop into some detail, we're contacted by an angler that he received bait from an area that just seemed off, it didn't seem right, provided it to the department. The department looked into it. They actually confirmed a non-native fish species called mosquito fish. After going around and checking out where the source came from, we were able to trace the source of bait fish. They were mixed in with fat adminos.  And Hog Island Wholesale had actually received that bait from a bait farm in Arkansas. It was McAlley Fish Farm in the Carlisle, Arkansas. So some of the actions that were taken, Hog Island was immediately restricted from selling bait fish that originated from McAlley Fish Farm. So for the notice, the following day, Hog Island was issued a citation which included a $233 fine, five point license violation, and they were required to destroy and sterilize their units that had fish that had McAlley Fish Farm fish there. One of the things that was in the importation permit for Hog Island Wholesale, and they had been aware of in the past, I think we had talked about in a previous board meeting, we had detected at one point back in 2008, 2009, Sean, three fine stickleback and central mud minnows. Those were present in the shipment that ended up arriving at Hog Island. We had worked with them and said like, you need to check your shipments, get back to us, let us know. If you find anything that's out of the ordinary, you need to contact us right away. So when this happened, we followed up with enforcement action because we knew that they were on notice to get in touch with us if there was any sort of an issue that came up with inspecting bait and finding something that was different. The interesting thing is that when we did this, the folks there were able to identify and find the fish first before any of our inspectors came there to look within like five minutes. So it was something we felt like they had adequate notice for. So they were required to destroy the big fish and consequently McAlley Fish Farm was no longer permitted to import fish in the state of Vermont. So some of the additional actions that were taken, the department issued a press release shortly thereafter. I'm really sorry, I thought we had actually shared that with folks on the board. So that was my mistake that we hadn't reached out and provided that level of corner spot as the folks. Great. What could you tell us about these mosquito fish? Are they something that would be native to Arkansas or really introduced from some other part of the world? Yeah, so that's really interesting. I was talking with folks kind of before the meeting I feel like this whole situation is like, if we can categorize it, it's a really good test of the emergency broadcasting system. So mosquito fish we don't feel like are gonna be able to survive in Vermont waters. They're not very cold tolerant and especially during ice fishing season we don't feel like they're gonna be able to survive out there. So it's good in that effect that we don't think that this kind of mishap ended up affecting Vermont's fisheries resources. However, that said, this gave us an awesome opportunity to look back, evaluate what worked, what didn't work. Where were the fails in the process for ensuring non-native fish species, aquatic species, fish pathogens? How do we ensure that those don't show up in a shipment here in Vermont? So I think this was like one of those great drills for us to really evaluate where we stand on things. And I actually have a couple slides coming up to talk about like what worked well, what didn't work well. What are they native to say Arkansas? Where are they introduced there from something? How in the world, what is there? What player are they native to? I believe they are native to Arkansas. Sean, is that correct? Yeah, so the Western mosquito fish is native to the Southern Mississippi drainage. Mississippi, Louisiana, Eastern Texas, Arkansas, Western Florida. So it's a native fish species down there. They're aware of the possibility of that being in their ponds where they raise their bait because built right into their own protocols down there that's kind of dictated by the Arkansas Safe Bait Program as a whole procedure to go through to reduce the risk of potential of mosquito fish being in those ponds. They have to drain them in between cohorts or rearing classes of golden shiners and if that has, if they're rearing, they have to drain those ponds, they have to dry them out, they have to treat it before they refill and start a new generation of bait fish. Obviously something down there went wrong for them to have shown up like this. And this is the first time after literally decades of Arkansas fish being shipped to Vermont out of the mosquito fish ever being in one of those shipments. So they just obviously skipped a step at that particular farm in this case. Thank you, John. So staff also individually contacted the 55 Vermont bait dealers because when this pressure release went out, I'm sure there was a lot of confusion as to like, well, I got fathead minnows from Hog Island, what do I do?  We're asking the dealers and providing them with some insight as to how to sort through the bait fish that they currently had, and they found a remove and dispose of them. Either way, we didn't anticipate these fish to survive out there in Vermont's cold waters right now. So there was two main things that went wrong here. One, the Cali Fish should have had or shouldn't have had mosquito fish in their shipment. As Sean mentioned, the Arkansas State Bait Program specifically calls out best management practices to prevent mosquito fish from showing up in their program or possessing or exporting them. Additionally, a Vermont importation permit only allows for the importation of fish species that are on that list, so they shouldn't have been doing that to begin with. And mosquito fish went unreported by the Vermont Wholesaler. I mentioned before that as part of Hog Island, Wholesales importation permit that they have to inspect their bait fish shipments and ensure that other species are present. And if they do, to immediately reach out and notify Vermont Fish and Wildlife that there's some sort of unauthorized fish species present, then we'd be happy to go up there and take a look and react from there. And that didn't occur. So in kind of those two fail-saves, those were two main things that went wrong that ended up having to get to the point that an angler, and this is where we kind of hop into what went right, first off, an angler in the community contacted us and let us know about this suspicious bait fish species that was present in their bucket. I think that's something to really talk about is the role that anglers play here as being kind of students of the resource, bait fish dealers, also in providing some sort of feedback to the department. And that's the whole reason that we're doing this regulations review process is to gather feedback and help have anglers and bait fish dealers be the ones that are helping us out and protecting Vermont's waters. We quickly confirmed and traced the source of mosquito fish. I think it was within two days, we had gone, identified the mosquito fish, inspected a number of mom and pops bait shops, then tracked it back to the wholesaler, and then at the wholesaler, we were able to track it back to the Cali Fish Farm. Our current regulations were able to require the immediate stoppage, destruction, quarantine, and disinfection of bait fish at the wholesale facility at the owner's expense. And we also were able to allow for the, the prohibition of any more importation immediately upon detecting that unauthorized bait fish should have been from the Cali Fish Farm. And then finally, I think we were able to quickly get the word out to Vermont's angling community. We reached out specifically through contacting via phone to each one of the bait dealers to let them know. And then we also coordinated with other out of state fish and wildlife agencies as well as the Arkansas program to let them know what was going on. But I do want to preface all this with, even in the days of completely unregulated and unrestricted movement of bait fish in Vermont, there was still importation of out of state sources. So even in that day, there wasn't a supply in Vermont to be able to meet the demand of bait fish that's out there. So, as far as whether or not there's a compelling reason to work and find a workable approach for a bait fish importation, I think there's a compelling reason for us out there to provide some sort of level of bait fish importation. And then finally, just gathering feedback from you. I've seen a number of folks at the bait fish public discussion sessions that we've been hosting. You know, ways that I think you can help the bait fish regulations review team is, you know, if you can attend the public discussion sessions near you that's great. Helping facilitate breakout groups was awesome. And, you know, thank you, Craig, Pete, Cheryl, Tim, Teresa, everyone else that kind of helped out, or Dennis as well, facilitating these small groups that really, really made a big difference. Encourage participation if folks have feedback. You know, there was recently an email that came out from a bait shop owner in Bombazine regarding like feedback that they would have. I mean, this is the whole reason that our bait fish regulations review is going on is to gather input from anglers, experiences that they've had, comments, things that aren't working, and then also to just gain suggestions on things that can be done to improve the bait fish ranks out there. I mean, that's the whole intent of this purpose right, or that's the whole intent of this process right now is to gather that public input to come up with, you know, something that's a workable approach for the public, but then also still provides, you know, serious protection for the Ramon's fisheries resources. And if you have any questions, just reach out. Craig. I was just trying to picture how feasible it is. I can't really fathom the amount of, the volume of bait that hog island handles. I was just wondering how they can handle that much bait and do an effective job of making sure there isn't unwanted minimal species in that bait, with the amount of bait they're importing into the state and distributing to most of the bait dealers and so forth. Do you see it as something that effective and feasible what they're doing as far as the monitoring that goes on? So we're actually in the process right now of kind of going through the bait deliveries to find out exactly how much bait is coming. We already know, we just have to like get that in the way, perform what folks know about that. With the mosquito fish, yeah, I think there was an opportunity to seriously pick them out. I mean, an example of that is just when the folks from Fish and Wildlife show up on site without even knowing what the fish species mosquito fish looked like, the owner of the facility was able to walk over to a tank of fat head minnows within five minutes to say, hey, is that one? And it was. So that to me was a good indication that there is a feasibility to it. Yeah, Dennis. Somebody, I guess I'm sorry for being mentioned, so this is not my idea, but I think it's kind of interesting whether or not it was feasible or not, raising our own minnows at one of our fish culture species, is that something? So speaking from a fish culture perspective, it would be pretty difficult, I think. There's a very limited time period that say, primitive aquaculture, you're able to actually grow fish. I mean, they're typically more of a warm, cool water species of fish, not so much cold water, which is a lot of our hatcheries are suited to cold water, some trout and salmon. And then that said, we already have like, we're running a significant shortage of trout, just yearling, just yearling, catchable size trout to be able to be stocked in Vermont waters. We're running about a 25 to a 30% shortage of trout just because of the loss of the Roxbury hatchery. So I think even with Roxbury coming up online, we're still gonna be just barely meeting what we need to for our regular stocking commitments. I would be, it'd be difficult. But I would say, with unlimited money, unlimited time, unlimited staff, maybe it's possible. I was Maine handling that. I know Maine doesn't allow any importation. So it's all gonna be native Maine source bait. Yeah. I've heard that there was a retired warden who was raising smelt. I haven't been able to find out too many details on that, but I was just wondering how Maine deals with it. There is a similar climate, similar latitude and so forth as far as either capturing or producing all the bait that's used in Maine without any importation of bait from Arkansas or other sources. Yeah. I do know they've made that decision to actively just kind of shut down their borders when it's just within there. I actually don't know how they managed to do that. I'm actually really surprised. I think a lot of people in Maine, maybe there's just a lot less people in Maine than used bait fish. It's just, it's really interesting to me because, you know, just in those days, they knew that they have lots more lakes than we do with the ice fishing and so forth, so. Anybody on the committee was, that's looking into this has communicated with nearby states or provinces on how they're dealing with issues like that. It just seems like the Maine not allowing the importation of bait fish, it's all gonna be sourced within the state somehow, whether it's rare in bombs or wild captured or. Sean, would you say something about that? Yes, so, I mean, that's a really good question that I've been asked by a lot of fishermen over the last few years and reality is that they're not keeping up with their man very well.  So they're wholly reliant on what's able to be captured, you know, from wild populations. What has happened, you may have heard a few years ago, the last four or five years, the Zombac case happened, Joji. So there was a wholesale facility out of Springfield, Massachusetts called Michael's Wholesale Bait, and they actually were charged federally for violating the Lacey Act by transporting and selling bait overstate lines into, from Massachusetts into Maine to supply these bait shops that were out of bait, basically, because they can't keep up with their demand. So these bait shops started looking around, despite the regulations that they have in place that says no importation, they were desperate. They're like, we need bait, fishermen want bait. So they went to the length of actually getting Michael's Wholesale to ship bait overstate lines violation of not only state rules, but federal rules. And that guy went to jail for that, lost his business. So it's something we've talked about within our bait fish group, but the reality is that's very difficult to do to basically build a wall and keep everything internal. Like Adam said, when we first started kind of reviewing bait fish regulations 20 years ago, I spent a lot of time talking to bait harvesters up in that Lake Champlain to learn about their operations and their businesses. And even on the best of years, when they were still allowed to net wild emerald shinders east from silvery minnows and sell them for use all across Vermont, they couldn't keep up, they couldn't put enough bait up for the winter and they still brought bait in from Arkansas when they ran out. So just don't think it's an option. But it could be nice to encourage maybe minimal wearing if it was feasible in Vermont, even if it was only to supplement or at least it's money circulating in the local economy. So just two millions of dollars every year going from Vermont to Arkansas. We'd be all for it. Yeah. Question. Hogger Island got five points. Yes. They get caught again, that's another five points, they lose their license. Yeah. What do we do? So. No supplier. Yeah, so it'd have to be if they get caught again within the major year. So. Five years. It'd be within a five year period if they violated again to have another five point violation then they would lose their privilege for a year, correct? Right. The points are good for five years. So they would lose their license for a year. So yeah, there would have to be a significant change. And I think right now, what we're seeing in the big fish industry just in Vermont is kind of the scrambling, trying to find even a source for fat head minnows right now. So yeah, there's a serious issue there that if something like that would happen. I mean, we obviously need to protect the resource and provide that level of protection, but how do you do that in a manner that isn't the best interest in the public while still protecting for the resource? It's a really good question. So I got a call from Mike J. Bass, Eleanor Ardelen, mostly. And I know two of them are, I know Pete and Cheryl, he told them too. And one of his concerns was that since 2008 when he got the first violation, he has to give the state 24 hour notice. Every time your truck comes, it's deliberately, nobody's been here since 2008. This is according to him. I really questioned him. I said, are you sure? He says to my recollection, nobody's been here since then. So he was concerned about that. And I think he wants to see some state intervention area. Make sure he doesn't do the wrong thing. He also said he wouldn't mind having the board going out there and checking out the facility and see what goes on there and the amount of weight that he gained.  I mean, that's a lot of, a lot of panels. And how many pounds of the, the end of it was like 200 or 300 pounds of those. So, and he is also concerned about his license. He's the only wholesaler in the state. And whether we like it or not, regular's, this board, in a fish and wild life department, are stuck with this bait regulation. And I didn't really feel like it'd be the best interest of everybody to keep him in business. And if that means getting an independent inspector or a state inspector out there to check his bait, I think it's worth a lot. So those are things we're thinking about and considering how to deal with going forward, how to create a chain of custody kind of system in which we have more security and more assurance that bait's clean. I don't wanna say too much about an enforcement action, but all I'll say is that I think we were extremely lenient in dealing with this given the history. So. I agree. I know he had protocol follow and apparently did not. However, like I said, if he ever went out of business, you know, I don't know what the state gonna do. I mean, they're just not gonna have any. It would be a big problem. That's right. And I know obviously the state can take the hard line, but I'd like to see, you know, some sort of operation between the state and the wholesaler to just try to make sure this doesn't ever happen again. Yep. So one of the things that we're looking into right now is just, you know, other options out there. So fathead minnows is like one of the concerns, you know, what's happening with the source of fathead minnows. And we're reaching out proactively looking at different sources, seeing that we're not doing the full evaluation, but what seems to make sense. I think just providing that guidance to the big fish industry is really important. That if we can find something that is a workable approach that still provides protection for the resource and maybe kind of front load some of that, that that would be helpful and in the best interest of everyone, especially in the fishery resource then.  If somebody would show up there occasionally and make sure he's following protocol, you need to become a checklist that he has to show you or something, you know. Good feedback. Are you definitely nervous? Yeah. Concerned if something slips through and he doesn't catch it. As Craig says, so are we. Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah. Is there a, I know in my communications which I would say were excellent for the department to the long-zipped bait dealer. I know the topic of having just a dealer meeting you're hearing, is that being considered at this point? Is that as critical as this is? Getting them involved as a group maybe. We looked at it and we actually discussed it on our Friday, we had a meeting on Friday, this past Friday, and we discussed that particularly as an agenda item. And we've actually had a pretty good amount of bait dealers showing up at the meeting and we've had good feedback from them where we feel like just encouraging participation from dealers at those meetings is good. And I think in that email, that response that came back from that bait fish dealer in particular, he brought up this idea of like perception from the public of being in cahoots with the bait fish industry. I think actually like having a good deal of only meeting would only help to reinforce that perception, so if there's a way that we can still gather input from them just through a public discussion session, I think that's kind of what our group that decided made the most sense. I don't think it would be entirely fair to some of the bait fish dealers who've gone to the existing meetings and sat through them, listened to them, contributed to those meetings to then have a special bait fish dealer meeting that they're either in the position of, oh, I gotta give up another few hours to go to another meeting and present my point of view as a bait fish dealer where I've already given it in this other meeting or their other option is, well, I've given it once, I'm not gonna go to the other meeting and then it appears as though they're not interested. So I think we're committed to sharing any drafts and draft proposals that go public with them and soliciting their input there and we very much like them to attend these hearings as some already have, but you know, maybe if we started the process in the beginning and known this was gonna happen in the middle of what we might've done that, but I think to do it now is a little unfair to those who participated through the public meetings. And I was just gonna hold on a minute, hold on a minute, Cheryl. The gentleman who wrote that, he did go to that meeting, right? He did, he had the opportunity to provide it. He's actually Tim Stable's son, too. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Have you contacted New York? Because he told me that he supplies a lot of dealers over there. Yeah, so part of like when the mosquito fish showed up, immediately I contacted Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, just as a courtesy heads up to them in New York and I called them the day that we actually confirmed the mosquito fish. You said he supplies a lot of main dealers. Yeah, yeah. Now that was one of the first things we did because we wanted to get out in front of it because that supplier supplies a lot of folks in New England. Funnily enough, Tom Jones and I stopped by that bait shop to buy bait a week before all this happens. Our timing was perfect. Any other questions? Thank you very much. I really appreciate you guys taking the time to do this. Thank you. Thank you, thanks.  You were talking about the actual time you're putting into it and the effort. Looks to me like you're not leaving a stone unturned. We're going to do a very tall prehensive review and... Hey Craig, thanks for that. Appreciate it. You know, Tim and I have missed a lot of our personal work days and time to attend these meetings every two weeks. Thanks. Yeah, well, everything that you're doing, Sean, Tom, Adam, appreciate it. We still hear more comments about the bait bowl, I think, than anything else you do with it. You both have an all-in-one. That's your wildlife, and what you're doing, I think, is the best answer. No matter what the outcome of it, we all know what you're doing if you don't do it. Thanks for saying that, Craig. That was well put. Okay, so the next item on the agenda is Dade Seltel, the waterfowl. Yeah, Teresa, given that you're probably going to be your dinner's going to arrive as good as it is in about nine minutes or so. If we want to do just a couple other housekeeping things. The next item, my suggestion, is two handouts that you should have with you is the board calendar. Everybody follow up this sheet that starts with July at the top. Goes on the back, being empty. Just want to bring that to your attention, and we'll make sure that all the stuff that's attached to your minutes, and that we'll get them to you in the draft minutes. So anybody have any questions on that? What I will note to you is we don't have any meeting next month. The next sheet I'll refer to in a minute has a full bunch of March, all spring, most hearings, among other. Waterfowl hearings, and some big, fifth-ranking meetings right there. So looking at that schedule, too, is in April 25th, depending on what happens, actually anyways, no, it doesn't matter what happens tonight regarding the moose. You also will be the final decision being made on the moose hunting permit numbers. There, and that'll be after we have the three public hearings, meetings, so we'll try to find out whatever you decide tonight.  The, let me just jump ahead, one other handout you have, which slips this way, does it not, fish in one of the board, winter spring meeting schedule? Everybody got that one, make sure you folks. Where's that? It should have been in your packet. I don't have it. Or if you have some more. Oh, okay, I'll give you one more extra. We'll make sure it's electronically. Yeah. Who's emailing me with that? Well, they're not there now, but I can actually give you this other copy if you need it. Thank you. Everybody got one? Okay. So Theresa, no, Kevin's not here. You might want to take a couple of minutes and just make sure that we have board members present at minimum the three waterfall hearings, meetings that we have, and then the three deer and moose, at least for now, get us through March since we don't have a board meeting. So maybe just want to do a check to make sure somebody from the board, at least it's going to one of those meetings. You said waterfowl over there. Yeah, starting on March 13th, the waterfowl meeting at Bennington Town Firehouse. That was a special meeting that we decided to hold extra this year. I appreciate Dave for doing that and the staff giving on a couple Southern duck and goose on as we heard from. So maybe if you want to just go through that quick, just to make sure we're covered. We don't need to know everybody that's going to go, but I think that one of these meetings does not have the board member be present at one of them. So that'll mean someone may have to drive a long distance if someone locally that's going to cover this meeting. So for the March 13th waterfowl hearing in Bennington, Dennis, Dave, myself, the waterfowl hearing on March 15th in Essex, got that covered, Whitehall in New York on 320.  I'll meet Jeff. Okay, so we got the waterfowl seems to be covered. The dear hearing, 319, Montpelier, 321. I better go to that one. Yeah, you better show up to that one. Better, 10, we appreciate you finding that place for us. We hadn't had a meeting. I don't know if we've ever had one in Bennington. We've had them nearby, so thank you for that, Anderson. 322, more leads. I'm raising my hand today after my term, my expires, but... We'll let you go on it. Oh no, we'll let you go on it. With a different voice. If you want me, I'm sure. May 8th, dear hearing in Rutland. I'll try it out. So let's go on it. You want your turkeys by then, right? Yeah, what's the difference between ear hearings and ear meeting newsings? Right, by statute we're in a process, a procedure they call it technically. Where the board issues the permits for analysts here, honey, and for moose hunting. And to do that, we need to have a 30 day public input period before the board makes a final decision on the permits. And we need to hold a three, minimum of three hearings for moose. And we need to hold five hearings for deer. Those are around the state as prescribed by board rule that the board decided years ago, this is where we're gonna have those. So we're kind of bound to make sure we hit those regions. Sometimes in the past, we've even had some extras beyond that. The process for new board members is, you notice there's kind of a split between March and then May. We've done that, so at least when the permit process comes forward in May, that the public has a chance to give us input and respond to the actual permits that the board has decided to put forward on the kind of a straw vote the department's gonna recommend. That'll happen in late April.  You will hear about the moose permit stuff tonight, whether you decide to recommend zero, 15, 200, whatever happens to me, so that's, does that help understand the difference to those? So there's some bounds that are set by statute and board rules of when and when this can be. Okay, the last item that we can, yes absolutely, I'm sorry, go ahead. Thank you. Let me off track. Okay, A8, the dear Karen and Rutland? Oh, yeah. Yeah, okay. Maintenance in South Berlin, too. Should we assign Patrick to some of these? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All of them. It's not here. Oh, well you're asking for it. He's got a white hole, he doesn't know anything. Yeah, white hole, that's a white hole. That's the two he's going through. Okay. No one asked right here tonight, in general. Yes. Okay, so the process that we do, we do this jointly together with the department and the board, these hearings, will be very much as we've done in the past. We will have presentations by the technical staff, in the beginning obviously, we'll have introductions, board members are there, some of them from the board to describe a little bit to the public attendance with the board process all about and the high salaries that you collect and so forth every year. And then we will continue to break out in a small group format for the large group and have them before you back. And we're going to do that this year for Waterfall, the first time that we've done that group. And I think it's maybe about time and it seems to be a lot of interest now with people getting new folks up and with us about the goo seasons and the timing of the duck season. That'll, we'll try to focus those questions a little bit more and try to understand instead of just doing straw votes for how many people want to have it and then we hunt it into December or January. So we're going to work on that this year. So we're going to continue with that format until you and the public tell us they don't like it. It seems to work. I only get positive responses over where I go on that because people who never use to get a chance to speak or feel part of the meetings go away at the end of the listening term. Okay, the last, the third sheet I will draw your attention to that I put on the board later and was this one that says Fish and Wildlife Board member regulatory timeline comments from your last meeting where we had a little dare sheets up on the wall and everybody went around and made some comments on each subject and put some, from your perspective in the little crosses under after each one, the plus signs or how many people kind of identify that as an issue to them or when the board they like to take these up again. That should be in the packet. It's the very last page. Previous meeting is minutes. Oh, okay. Yes, we don't have it. It's not in the packet tonight. No, it is. It's on the back if anybody wants this one. Can't find yours. Share it. Okay, we'll have the minutes. That's the brothers. The minutes are here. Anyway, being just looking on with your neighbor, but I haven't done my homework on that one yet. So it's on tonight's agenda. So I want to put that back on your, I think on your schedule. I put it back to April 4th at your next meeting to bring that discussion back for you. Okay, and the only reason we did this is try to develop some order and thinking to the future and some kind of a input in your part on how often you want to revisit some of these rules and petitions that come before the board. It seemed to be the last few years that you were getting a petition every other month on a different topic and we were just trying to do this little exercise to help you. So your working document, there's plenty of document and it doesn't take away the role of the department field. Any emergency need to come before you with a rulemaking on a species going south of us or a big issue will do that if it's under your pre-rule. Your pre-rule. Pre-rule. Or be, sorry, it's because. So any questions on that, which you're looking at in front of you, we'll put it in the minutes again. So I need to have a little more internal discussion with staff and with management team to try to take what you gave and put, and then offer our and put back and try to see your reaction to that. I know for example, the land rule for example, what I'm talking about is staff's been bugging me for almost two years to our state lands team that meets on a regular basis to come back with looking at that rule again and making some changes potentially. I kept saying, no, no, no. You're obviously saying let's put out the future, but I think if we're at a period where we're not being in a day with lots of other work that you have to do, I'll probably talk with management team and my staff and say, well, can we maybe look at this in within the next two years to do it that way. Any questions on what that is all about, that exercise? So how it may work in reality as soon as we get a petition on a specific topic saying on trapping or fair bearer, we may try to go back to this. That doesn't mean the board can't take it up all the time, but you may decide, well, we decided since we just had the trapping rule open, there's no immediate issues of the population, their numbers from a science perspective, we may wait for another two years to do it. That's all with that. It's just some kind of planning tool in guidance document for the board members and understanding the board members coming through off the board members. Okay, any other questions on that? I just think that's gonna be very helpful to the public as well, knowing that there's kind of a set way. I mean, we talked about this with the bait fish knowing that maybe it'll come up every four years, but we're not gonna just deal with a petition or if the board, no, I'm not saying we're not, but it just makes sense to have some sort of a systematic approach to these petitions. So I think this is a good idea. All right, well, thank you. I really did assist with your help here. You know, obviously we have lots of talks and one of the big reasons that is a concerning factor of people participating in fishing and trapping is rural complexity and changing all the time. There is quite a staff cost and as well as the administrator costs would state or not to change rules and regulations all the time. It seemed to work really well with deer rural last time and that was just kind of a general person's agreement with the board that let's wait and visit this every 30 years or so, so that's of course. And you can change it. You know, we can have this discussion and you're not saying, well, I'd like to move this up a little more than kind of a green two on the board. All right, so that's those three topics that we'll want to get to. Great. Any questions? Yeah. Okay, we'll break through dinner. All right, so we're going to have, Dave's going to do his presentation on the water file, please. Here's your water file introduction. Yeah, quite the intro. Actually, I'm gonna melt that. Okay, but mostly I think I've already met Dave Saudeville, our water file biologist that we have before that worked out as a debt tree. Previously worked with Dupson Limited before he came to Vermont. Actually, I've always loved to tell him that he started his career as a product prior to the three months of conservation here, Lake Balmzine. That's the major one of the first years that I started over with the camp program and whatever, I'm just reading more about this. He never did hold that distance. But from Bennington, Vermont, which is neat to see if Vermont ever comes through, go to conservation camps, come back to work in the summer, go to college, go and get a master's degree, come back and work for us. And now having a project that entailed a lot of different works from when you're going to work. And Dave has also played a significant hat in the Atlantic Flyway Council. And I think he talked to some of you about that. That's 17 states, a couple provinces, roughly. I'm always wrong, so please do. So, Dave gave us a presentation a little bit less of what we thought we would do tonight in this fall format, very similar to what we did the last two years that worked quite well in our estimation from other board members' feedback. But Dave, I'll give a quick overview of where we are with some of the recommendations that were mailed to you. And then we're gonna walk through what the outcome we need tonight is a quick straw vote for each of you is how do you feel about these topics that we wanna present to Waterfall Hunters and the public at the public hearings so you get some feedback before you do your final vote in April. And you said on April 30th is probably the final deadline that the commissioner on behalf of the board here will submit to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service our recommendations for next fall, Waterfall Hunters. So, Dave, I'll turn it over to you and then later I'm gonna walk through for that point on standby in yesterday's questions. Some of the key things we need here in Put-Op. So, Mark asked me to just go through really quickly the process and how we come about the recommendations. Not only as we move into the final vote. So, as you mentioned, within the flyway we meet twice a year. I'm taking off this Sunday and heading down to New Jersey. Everybody from the 18 or 17 states and provinces are coming together from Georgia, the Eastern provinces. And this February meeting is more about research that's going on, surveys that we're gonna be conducting come spring and summer. And then we also have a meeting in the fall, September and that's where we talk about recommendations looking at all the information that's been gathered over the summertime. We usually don't get reports from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Canadian Wildlife Service on their surveys until late August. So, we meet in September. We make recommendations to the council when Mark's our representative as the council of the states and provinces and the representative of the council. And that's in conjunction with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Any of the non-profits that are interested in being there, recommendations go on to what they call the Service Regulatory Commission. They bring all the flyways together, the four flyways and listen to the comments. Those recommendations, once it's decided, go into the Federal Register or post it and then they come back to us and say, this is the framework we have to work with and that's what we're coming to you with you right now is our outside dates. Within our own department, the way we start after the seasons, even during the seasons, you all get comments from the public. I get received comments, I speak to the field wardens to see how the seasons have been going and what comments they've been having there. So, we've draft up our preview and kind of broad recommendations that you've all received. That was reviewed by Mark and Scott Darling after I brought it together. And then it went up through management team to see if they had any other issues that they thought about and then it was brought down to the board and that's what you're looking at here. Some of the main bullets that we have tonight, not much has changed since last year, we're still looking pretty good. So, we're looking at the liberal season of 60 days and 66 per day. It can be more restrictive if you want to in some areas, that's one of the aspects. 2018 duck season. This year is supposed to be a Saturday starter. We continue with the two Wednesdays and Saturday. If you're Lake Champlain, we're recommending a split. We're not recommending one for the interior. Part of that comes when we're looking at that survey that we spoke about in January. You should all receive a copy of that too, I think electronically and then one person asks for it and Mary sent it out to them. The seasons that we're recommending for the interior was starting on Saturday, October 13th and having that run straight through December 11th. So, that'd be for the interior zone. The survey, most of the folks in the interior zone, they want it a straight season, they're interested in having most of the days in October and then most of the remaining days in November and very few have had interest in December. A lot of the interior does freeze up earlier than the Champlain zone. The season that we're looking at proposing for the Champlain zone was to go from October 13th and run it through the 28th of October. That's a little different than past year where we're recommending a five day season and then we take a two week break and then try to figure out where to distribute the rest of the days. So, we're looking at putting more days in October and then proposing to split it until November 10th and then run it through December 23rd. And part of our reasoning there was when we looked at the survey, a large percentage of people that they wanted, I think about 40% wanted in most of the days in October, 40, 45% of them and then the remaining people wanted to evenly split between November and December. And that's where we tried to balance it out. And I went through the days with what we propose now. There's 16 days in October, 21 in November and 23 in December, so I'm trying to balance that out. So, that's within the seasons. The next part that we were looking at was when to start the season, whether on Saturdays or Wednesdays. And this year I was proposing something a little different after this year. Looking at the numbers, I thought possibly going or recommending Wednesday and Saturday, alternating every other year. Where did that whole two Wednesdays go to Saturday? Previous survey back in the early 2000s. So, there was about 65%, almost 70% that wanted Wednesday starting and then the remainder wanted, so they went back and forth. And so, I was looking at the numbers and within the Lake Champlain Zone, about 45% wanted Wednesday, 33% wanted Saturdays and then there's another 22% that had no opinion. It can go either way. So, some of the reasoning between going to additional Saturdays, if you look at when the majority of people hunt weekdays, only about 12% hunt the majority of the time during the weekdays. Looking at having additional days available for school age hunters to get in there and recruit them and also just maintaining, recruiting new people that have to work and can only hunt on weekends. So, that was part of my thought process. Next one was looking at the September, September Goose season, recommending starting in on September 1st and running it through the 25th, maxing out our 25 days that were allotted. Have eight birds per day. And with the migratory population of Canada geese, recommending that start on the same day as the duck season Saturday, October 13th and then running that straight through before the 50 days that were allotted with three bird daily bags. It's part of my process there. I know we've had some comments coming to the commissioner about trying to split that. Again, I went back to the survey and I looked at what the majority of the hunters wanted and they were per straight season and that's what we were recommending. But I can predict that in the Bennington meeting, you're gonna hear a lot of folks or a group of hunters who would like to see that split. One individual told me that he's gonna rent a bus and offer free beverages to bring the crew. So, maybe a good size crew, which would be... Theresa, I won't show up. Yes. I grew up there in the 80s and saw the deer hearings and I was paid time to go into the fields. Hopefully a little more civilized crew. What would be the option of having a split season if the government gave it? You can have one split just like that. So, what game would you recommend? Oh boy. That would have been, you know, the way we had the season now, we can't start till the 10th. That's intentional to allow some of the migrants to go through and the bulk of the birds are moving through in October and early November. So, that's over half as we pick a split and that's when they would push through. That's the deer I had, honestly. That's why I don't recommend a split. So, it's wide open for me to do that. You know, a lot of people are saying that the birds are coming in right after the season's over and reports of hundreds of them coming off the bay. I was actually hunting in those areas and I saw the birds there prior to the season closing, I'm just chantsling. And what I think part of it is is we're taking the pressure off the birds when they're all congregating again and going back out to the fields. And that's, I can't prove that because we're not shooting any in December and we're not shooting any in return. But I think if we actually could get, I'd eat some of those birds, we would see that it's still our resident birds that are shooting. But still going back, I mean, I don't know when I would, honestly, I wouldn't recommend a split, but that's more of a preference of the hunters. And then, as you know, there'll be as many preferences. So going on to snow geese, recommending an October 1st start, running that right through to the end of the year. And then what I looked at on the season was we would close it Friday before, the last days Friday before the youth turkey. And I tried to back date it from there and use our 207 days available for that season. Our conservation order days are we allow 15 birds by regulation that was set years ago and during the regular season over all 25 birds. So we try to maximize that. The one change this year that we had is that the retail or the retail population increased and went over the thresholds so we're able to actually offer two birds a day instead of one. And that's what we're recommending. And then the youth butterfly season is usually the last weekend of September which would be the 29th and 30th. And we're recommending that, hopefully it'll be a little cooler this year. Last year I know it's very warm and mosquitoes were pretty prevalent for people a little bit about a week earlier the way the calendar fell. It's just the way that the weekends fall sometimes. And then the final portion was the Woodcock and Snipes season. We're recommending again October 1st through November 14th. Maine actually just did a recent pilot study and it was interesting to see many of their birds were leaving Maine and around October 30th through November 5th. So we're right about there when the birds were coming through but most of them seemed to overshoot us and within four days they were down in Pennsylvania and the Carolinas. So they do some pretty quick flights. And then just as a note on page 15 of the preview it has a summary of the recommendations. And with our season we're setting them for the Champlain Zone and the Inland Zone. I have an email into my counterpart, Jessica, in New Hampshire. They don't have any dates yet for their interior zone or Inland Zone which would be an academic early zone. So we'll see you further this weekend. We'll talk about this in a little more information. One thing I can tell you about the public meetings is that New York staff is gonna be at the White Hall to help us there at the Essex to answer questions on the New York seasons and recommendations. And hopefully Josh Stiller who's out of Albany and is their waterfowl biologist will be able to go to the bank to meet him. He said he's gonna try to meet us there so we'll have some more help there. So the water will take a little lead on that? Yes, because the board will, the way we talked about having to present and then I'll give a general presentation of what we usually do and then we'll do the breakout groups. I'm also still gonna have comment cards that people can tell us. They don't want to speak for breakout or they don't want to make your comment. I think we said public speaking can be intimidating as well. And as we mentioned, April board meeting will be the final vote and then we have to have all the paperwork in by September 30th. But whatever you decide on the board by the 5th or 6th, we can have that wrapped up into the recommendations and our commissioners to ask them to have their votes within a week and then they'll agree to make sure that there's no errors that they see on there and then it goes into the federal register with all the states that they have. That's it, Mr. President. Mr. Berger, what, what, I had a question regarding the mallards. I know we had a presentation last year regarding the red flags in your population. Are you recommending a change in the bad limit for mallards? Not at this time. If we're gonna do anything, it would be season light and vaglums really don't have any effect on the researchers showing us days of exposure to hunting. That's what really affects that. And at this time, we're not gonna recommend anything. We're talking about it within the, within the flyway. But also one of the questions that I had for the breakout groups was if we had to maintain a liberal 60 day season for all the other species, would you be willing to accept a little more complexity of having a season within a season that's safe? We needed a 45 or 50 day season on mallards only. We've done those back in the 80s and where it was a 30 day season and you're only allowed to shoot black ducks for 15 days. It's just, you have to definitely look for syllabus. And it makes it a little harder for law enforcement and the hunters, but that gives you sometimes flexibility that still maintain record levels of green, new teal and when ducks are doing fine, so you can still harvest them during the 60 day season. But maybe we need a 50 day season of mallards to come to that. So you're comfortable right now saying mallards continue with it as it is in order to adjust to that season? Our overall, it's within the flyway within the Eastern Survey area and our North or Lanark surveys, they're going down slightly for being buffered by the Eastern Survey area because their numbers are up while our numbers are a little bit down. The 72 plots that we do in Vermont seem just a slight increase to stable even though we're not seeing as many birds but we're not seeing as many at this point. So at this point, you know, there's still 700,000 so we're not going to harvest them here in Vermont. Sure. Doesn't it worry in the 80s, Dave, that mallards would displace black ducks? Yeah, there's a lot of hybridization. I remember the main professor, Jerry Long, of course, already has things to do with what I've done with my legacy, you know. You know, with our habitat genes that we have here, you know, it's just for more of the Midwest now. I know you really have touched that well. Shoot what? Some vague thing from the back of my head. You think they said this last year, too, where you need to get to a province to adjust their bag limits accordingly? That's our problem. Big steps though, right, Dave? A province is what it is. Well, we have a parody with them and they actually shoot fewer birds. We're almost 50-50 now, but a lot of the hunters that go up there are U.S. hunters that buy tags, so it's not, it's not Canadian hunters.  Right. Well, my question really was, since we, I think it was like two or three years ago, we're elected to start the early resident Canada goose season on the first rather than wait till after the holiday. Have you had any issues since we've done that? I haven't had any. I don't think you should ever have somebody hunting off a town beach one time. That was that for me. That's not a, so, we haven't had complaints, so it's good to do it. For new board members on that, Craig, you can explain our code. For a while, when we could hunt this early season, they'd call it on the Canada geese, trying to hunt resident birds, during Vermont, that's what it's designed, September. The department was always recommending to the board to hold it after Labor Day. And then we got so, when the calendars were working, you were shortchanged in our early season, quite a bit, almost a week. Sometimes we decided to try it and, well, behold, we didn't see the conflicts or the complaints come forward that thought might be there, from people still being present in their camps on Labor Day. People all shoot and quote, and their words, their pet geese. I think there have been enough nuisance geese who dropped these on their lawns and tried to keep them off the geese loss. Has there been any studies on diseases that the geese carry? I think there was some concern in the Midwest affecting turkey populations, and that was heavy geese populations. It's something that diseases they were carrying, having an effect on turkey populations in the West. I didn't know of any, well, I mean, the ones that have avian influenza, which they were worried about, which is always out there in nature. It's more a concern for these large poultry, turkey and chicken operations. But you'd have to eliminate it, you wouldn't even eliminate the disease if you removed all wild herbs. I read something, the concern was that Missouri was having a big significant decline in turkey populations, and they were while turkey, and they were attributing it to possibly the increase in the Canadian goose, anybody else? Yeah, I haven't, I haven't seen anything like that. But it's something we're very vigilant about while at diseases, and just so the board knows, at some point we can do a little more review with you, we spent a considerable amount of resources in the department, not only trying to train staff, what to look out for, you sit on the, what response do you sit on, in terms of the waterfall. Birds, birds. Birds had a disease, big game of disease. Big game of disease. So, some of you might have met Walter Cottrell, who we hire as part-time in the department, became the up-to-suit-the-deer-yard man, but he works now with Tufts University, and we're constantly doing training back and forth. I get an email, maybe once a month, I shoot a tan, somebody's concerned, they see something. So, it's on the horizon. We're doing the best we can with unlimited resources to help our staff train it. But, the question of any influence, is one that Lewis and I are quite familiar with, because we've kind of gone head to toe with the fiber matter culture on that. And if they want to kind of put it on the wild birds, kind of the problem, in reality, when you look at the science, it's poor husbandry practices on the dairy farms, people letting wild birds intermix with their domestic birds, not having good hygiene practices on those facilities. And that's really the bottom line. So, we kind of really step forward real hard, but also, you might see a news story, someone from another forestate government said, oh, you know, the waterfall's gonna be migrating now. Be careful, farmers, you know. Well, no, farmers practice, the husbandry practices. Keep your birds to hope. Walt was one of the first ones I brought up. The disease started in the north and was moving south through the farms while the geese and other birds were migrating north. It was opposite. It was going in the opposite direction. It was moving south. Just one meeting's for you, right here. Absolutely. Well, the poultry farms are great for your time. Yes. The poultry farms. We didn't want the dairy farms to be there. You give them so much. You give them chickens. I don't know why I want to give them chickens. So, anyway, I think we can move through this really quick. Dave, if anybody comes up with any questions with us, I really want to commend you on the survey you've done to study your work with this really thorough. And one thing that's opened my eyes being able to sit at the Atlantic Highway Council where I carry Vermont's vote on all these issues and ballots and things you ask about trees and what models is the amount of work that David's counterparts do together. They get together for five days. And I tell you, that's five days from 8 o'clock till 9 or 10 before they finally find the hospitality suite. But incredibly long days cranking a lot of data. A lot of statisticians that are involved with this work. Something I know I could never touch with my skills. So, Mark, given this is a straw vote, I assume that the board has proposed to do so to do this with both hands. That would be the fastest. We don't need no names. That's a good, glad you mentioned that, of course. That's what we did the last time. Again, this is so that you can come back and we're putting something for the hunters to react to. And you can change this in able, if you want, to depend on the input. But we'll be here also to respond to you. I'll have Dave on what we're here at the means. He's quite different than what we recommend. Let's see, I'm probably going to go back and remind you what the survey said and the history, what the ramifications are. If you did a split in the Goose season, if you open it later, whatever. Okay, so let me go through this really quickly. The first bullet, you know, I've got this sheet. I'm going to go through these bullet by bullet. And as Commissioner Sebelich just showed, hands hold the liberal seats. And that's basically just the maximum amount of hunting days that the framework and the land flyway will allow us to have a 60 day season under the federal framework. So does that people have, where are we on that?  If you're asked. Of the liberal hunting season that Vermont has. And every state has that option to flyway. Charlie, do you want? Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. When to open the season. So, second bullet is open the, next fall's hunting season on Saturday. We've been doing alternating twice, like they said. How many on Saturday? Raise your hand. Okay, well, again. Okay. Open this year, it's the same question in a way, that these are get to the dates. So actually, let me just go back. The first bullet will probably give us guidance for next year to make them back and recommend Wednesday. You can change it to a Saturday if you want, just to let you know. Instead of going two years Wednesday, one year Saturday, we're going to probably think about looking at one day, one year Saturday, this year, next year Wednesday. But again, the board has a prerogative. If you want to go back with a Saturday, we'll share with you what we feel that people want from the survey results we have. Number two, this year proposed season to be October 13th. And for the interior zone of Vermont, it to run through December 11th. Now again, if there's any question, if you don't understand what an interior zone is or a Champlain can add, again, we've got the guy here, he can answer that. Okay, all those in favor? Okay. Lake Champlain zone, split season between those dates, 13th to the 28th of October, November 10th through December 23rd. All those in favor? Okay, Harry? Is that just a, do you know, or am I going to know? Okay, 11-1 is what I got? Anybody else know? That'll be one in your area, we'll probably hear lots of different opinions and understandably so. Alter, okay, I'm not going to skip that, we already have the first one, the approach to Wednesday and Saturdays. I already got the sense that you want to go that way. I'll turn it in. Unless I hear something from people now, okay. Opening the resident can of Goose season, September one through the 25th, maximizing the 25 days we have available. All those in favor? 11-1? Cheryl, are you there? Okay, all right, close here. When to all, the 2018 migratory Goose season. This would be, we're proposing to open it on October 13th, so coincides with the duck season opener, that'd be on a Saturday. All those in favor? Okay, 12 again. Snow Goose on October one, open then. Show of hands, okay, we've got everybody. There aren't any, so it doesn't matter. Increase the northern pin tail bag limit from one to two. Dave, how many pin tails do we actually shoot? Ask that. I never got to shoot open, but that doesn't mean a lot. Some years, it depends on who surveyed, but very few show up on the wing surveys. Just casual observations of those, looking around this year, we had actually a good number of pin tails. In some of the marshes, I mean a good number is obscene, pin tails here and there. So there's no real number that happened, then even canvas bags and redheads were. Sure. They're more like a mid-continent burn, and then to the west, more like a black-up is more pretty much an Atlantic flight we burn. Okay, all right. That one, go to two to one that we're allowed to do, we're just trying to be more opportunity for hunters on the pin tail. All those in favor? So everybody, but grab your notes. 11 and one. Yeah. Hold the youth hunting weekends, September 29th, the 30th. That's our opening weekend last week as a tender, okay? It's always been the last weekend, okay. And then gosh, you guys can hear it in the phone without Pat Berry being here on this one. Hold the wood cocks, night season October 1st to November 14th. Just so you know, we have no ability to hold it earlier in October 1st. That was set years ago, and it's always been a great, I've had personally other people that why can't we open it? When we open our small game season, you'll hear that on the board. Usually it's the last Saturday in September. We don't have that option. So we're all proposing to open it as early as we can, which is October 1st. Everybody in favor? Okay. It is too bad. It couldn't open the same day as drought season. Last year was only a day earlier. All I say is I wish I was on council when that was done. But I wasn't. I was a student at Maine. Maine kind of drove that. They're the leaders that were talking to us. They got what they wanted. I think we don't, because I used to hunt Maine, small game, I didn't call it. They're small games, so I got the one. So, this way it works. We got a word to say. This is super. Anybody got questions at any time? Reach out today and we'll go back to April after we see what the people react to. Hey, great job. Okay. This is the school I've seen it go. That was the easiest. Yeah. Thank you, Dave. Now we go on to the next one. I'm good. And you don't need it. I know. You got it on there. Here, I'm going to go on to the next one. Okay. I'm going to go on to the next one. Cedric's going to do a quick presentation. Let me give a quick introduction for you guys. Actually, I want to have Scott, darling. Oh, Scott. Sorry. That's okay. Scott is going to call him. He's actually on vacation this week, but I wanted him to be here. What it's important, this is a little bit different than what the department has traditionally done with proposals for the board. The commissioner and I made a very posthumous decision to have this proposal go before you from big game team, not go through the management team. You know, in the department. And not that we don't change a lot, although there is some leeway. Some of these seasons that we have, sometimes there's a recreational component, there's an economic component, social part. That's where the management comes into it. As long as we don't, you know, make recommendations there beyond what the science could tolerate in a species or understand. So that's really important, that you folks understand this. Most of the public who's seen this control doesn't understand this. They're sending commissioner emails one way or another, thinking it's his proposal, it's not. This is coming from our big game team. Have we got Scott on the phone? Scott is ready for you. Okay, good, he's here. So what we wanted to do tonight, I assume everybody here got the proposal. We've got some extra copies if you don't. If you want to see that, is Scott's going to, I'm going to ask him as chair of the big game team and Scott works out in the office, just to kind of kick this off and introduce, you'll probably turn over center for a little while.  He's been our project leader ever since we've hunted moose on here in the Vermont. But I also want to introduce to you some of you who've got to meet this young lady at the public moose information meetings have is this Dr. Katie Dieter, who's here. Thanks for coming up here today. It's important that I share with you Katie's background. She came to us, she's a recent hire for our department. Go to guess, eight months, 10 months, I know you went through your six month probation. How close am I? Just about, almost seven months. I'm not too far off, eight months. I'll give you a couple extra months. And I'm pretty old. I don't know, I'd like to trade places with you. But she was a faculty member at Humboldt State University, has a PhD from Virginia Tech, studying climate change and piping plovers. For those inland people, that's a bird on the coast. Has a master's of science degree from Trenton University on shorebirds. Bachelor's of science degree at McGill University. She's worked on mountain plovers, moisture catchers, the night of explaining them what that is. Climate change affects on a wise floor and wolf mission. She's that, so a tremendous background. And I only can say as someone who's been able to see the benefits of her work so far for this department a lot of God sent to us. From everything we do, from even trying to evaluate and decide what questions we ask from hundreds by a license to all the way down, looking at technical information on all of our species. And I think we're very fortunate to have you, Katie, working with us. One of the things that she's been doing right now is trying to strengthen our relationships with the University of Vermont, our key research faculty that is up there, working on all these species things. Big help on Lewis Project and on and on.  He's our immediate supervisor. But Katie, you know, please feel free at any time tonight you want to step in and try to explain to us some of the modeling or science of questions come up. I want you to feel free to, you know, ask her questions at any time on this. So what I'd like to do is turn it over to Scott and have him walk you through the proposal. You there, Scott? I am, I am. Okay, could you hear me all right? Fine. Okay. Everybody here, Scott?  I'm gonna try to turn you up here. Yes, you're up all the way. All right, just try to speak up a little bit. So part two, just before I give you the green light, Scott, here, is Lewis myself will talk a little bit as we look into the email that I sent you from some of the administrative management issues that we deal with in the Department trying to administer the moose hunt that we want. So we'll share that with you, if I can answer any questions you have as you make your decision here tonight. It's really important, I got to emphasize this, that we get a sense whether the board wants to move forward or not with the moose hunt. Lewis and I will talk about that later after the presentation with the game team, because all of a sudden you're gonna be doing a final vote on this in April. And we're in trouble if all of a sudden you vote something different, quite different, that we think you're going because there's a lot of prep and homework that has to be done to administer in Vermont, Moosehark, as we do it right now in the state. All right, Scott, it's all yours. I really appreciate you on your time off here to, I think you had to drive somewhere half an hour so you get self-home service. Okay, Mr. Kenny, the hills, all right, all yours. And, Kenny, it's given us the past few months. And as your challenge is, we're facing at least four times of the valuation. We've also been able to cross the data from our first year of our research project in the North Beach, and that is what we've had, and we've got more to check after we've got it. And anyway, I think one of the key points is that we've talked to the needs to recommend new ways to review the area and the proposal. Secondly, we felt we wanted to establish thresholds for when harvesting rooms was being proposed, and in North, we are suggesting that 75% of the WNU is meant to be objective for two consecutive years. And thirdly, we're saying that the NWU is being going to need to seriously leveling off on their earlier decline to leave you with a deposit outcome that we hope will continue to recognize and be able to show an increased over time. And fourth was, if you look at the both house sex ratios after a few years of it's been put up, only harvesting into most of the state, and it's probably going to be on the state on the appropriate level. So, in this proposal, much of the attention is not directly to the NWU team one and E two, where you think that you have currently one year for a mile, which is the revised density objective for those units. And we feel strongly that we need to maintain these entities at this level in those two WNUs for a while to see how the more efficient response in those more advanced cities. And our proposal is to make a little proposal before you with consistent with the needs to maintain those new cities. We're living hard to say there's no influence on new population trends in those two WNUs over the next few years. We've not called the proposal hardly the proposal far as biologically necessary at this time, with the entities being at this time. So that was described as biologically sounding consistent with our mission. So with that, I think I've heard it over this subject, and we'll provide a little more details in the end for all of them. Great. Thanks, Scott. Did people hear those bullet points? Because I wrote them down as Scott said them and I can repeat them if you didn't hear them. But if you did, I'll leave it as it is and turn it over a second. People hear them okay? No. Okay. Okay. I'm going to try to turn off some lights here. Is that okay? Yeah. Are you still there, Scott? That's important for me to know this. Well, so Scott actually cut a bit. So maybe I will be quick. Said it has a quick delivery. That's good. But he did cut a lot. So hopefully some of these graphics will help it sink in a little bit. So I'm going to just quickly reveal last year's most seasoned hunting results, some of the highlights, and then came an explanation of the 2018 season proposal that you have before you tonight. So just a quick review here. Last year the archery season was 17 permits. You could see that some of these units just had one. And there was only three in E1 and three in E2. So the impact from the archery hunt was basically negligible when you look at the whole state. The regular season, there were 63 permits. Again, compared to what we're kind of growing accustomed to here, these are pretty small numbers. And with about a 60% success rate, not a big impact, but it's still providing hunting opportunity and a lot of happy hunters part took in the season. So looking at the archery season results, we ended up with 18 prunes, one of the auction winners. He'd like to go use his winning bid during the archery season. Eight bulls were taken, that's a 44% success rate. That was up from last year, and also above the six year average. So we've had six archery hunting seasons now. So they did well last year. And moose were taken by archers in six different management units, as you can see there. The regular season ended up with 70 permits when you add in the other four auction winners and three special opportunity permit holders, in addition to the 63 that the board authorized. 32 moose were taken, and that was a 46% success rate, about the same as the previous year. Both seasons combined, produced an estimated six tons of boneless moose meat or enough for 48,000 quarter pound servings of moose meat. Of course, it was bulls only, and there was one cow taken by one of the special opportunity permit holders, because as you can call the board, we wanted to give them either sex choice. But there were 31 bulls taken, and we got cementum or incisors teeth from those bulls, and this is our age structure from the harvested bulls. Actually, the cow is on year two also. She was a yearling. I want to draw your attention to the fact that we were pleased to see that 23% of the harvested moose last year were yearlings. You might recall the previous year it was very low, the lowest we had all time, so that was very satisfying to see that. This is the percentage of yearlings in the harvest through time, and as you can see, that black line shows that Trent has been going down. And again, as you might recall from last year, I know a few of you board members are new, but a lot of you came to the three public meetings, so we appreciate that. But again, we were down to 7% yearlings last year, and that went back up to 23%, which is really the highest it's been for seven years, and these are small sample sizes, so we don't know exactly what the confidence intervals are here, but anyway, it was a positive outcome compared to the previous year. We aren't getting any information from harvest to cows, of course, now that it's a bull's-only season. I did mention that one cow. She was a yearling, and she had not ovulated. But in general, we've lost that data set for the toning being. Fortunately, because of our new college moose study that was implemented a year ago, we are getting valuable data up in the study area at least, up in wildlife management units, E1 and E2, from the study, and especially the calving rates, by trying to sneak in on collared cows during the calving season. And so last spring, we had 16 calves that we were able to confirm were born from 30 to 30 cows that were collared. And so that's .53 calves born per cow. If you look at some of the results from New Hampshire, for instance, which have higher rates, if you look at the percentage of yearlings versus older animals in your collared population, that's going to make a big difference. The board is used to being presented ovulation or calving rates from prime-age cows that were harvested by hunters by looking at their ovaries. And those are three-year-old cows and older. With our collared cows, when they're captured, of course, they're netgunned, so they're not immobilized. And it's too intrusive to try to jack their jaw open and try to get a look at their approximate age by tooth wear. And so they're not aged. So we don't know how old they are. Unless they survive, like they've done, if a lot of them have done, and they're going into this coming year, the ones that were collared a year ago, we know they're not yearlings. But we really don't know how many of those ones captured last January were yearlings. But we could guess out what they might be. And let's say 10% of them were yearlings. So let's say three were yearlings. And if we ignore those, we could say, well, maybe the calving rate of the older cows was 0.59, or maybe 20% were yearlings. And then the calving rate would be 0.67. Again, we don't know how many are 2 1⁄2-year-olds, but probably the numbers of those 30 cows that were collared that were three years old and older, obviously somewhat less than 30. So the calving rate may be quite similar to some of the rates we've been seeing from the ovaries that we've collected in recent years. Could the calving rates be higher with predation? Could it play roles? Absolutely. That's a good point. We try to visit the cows every two or three days to try to catch that. And but we know we're going to miss some of that. So we did have a pregnancy test done on the cows when they're captured, a blood test. And there were 19 that tests are pregnant. So we might have missed three of them, but it probably wasn't any greater than that. Just another question.  If they're missing their first estrus, will they come into a heat on a second estrus? Yeah, so since they're, it should be bred around October 1st. By the time we collar in January, it's they've had to plenty of time to cycle twice, actually, if they were going to. The other critical outcomes for the ball or animals, of course, is how many are surviving through the winter. And this picture here shows one of the calves that died. There were 12 that died, but 18 survived. So the survival rate is 60%. And we lost three cows, so 27 survived or 90%. And these calving rates and these survival rates are very valuable for us to input into our most population model. We've been using inputs from New Hampshire's results over the years and looking at our own age structures and our percentage of yearlings in the harvest, looking at our tick levels when we count moose in the fall. But to have real data from our own moose in this particular part of the state, at least we know that that's an input that's reasonable for a particular year. This is going to change from year to year, based on the level of ticks that are on the moose. We know that. We know that from previous studies in New Hampshire, Maine. But still, it gives us an input that we could put in for one year every three years, play around with the model that way. Most of these calves especially died from anemia or blood loss and protein, blood volume to tick feeding. The survival rates of the newborn calves, these ones that we were able to detect that were born last May ended up being 62%. So six of the calves that we detected on the landscape with these collared cows died most of them in a couple of weeks, one of them made about a month. Is there a question? Probably an estimate, I won't say yet. The other issue that we've been looking at, and again if you went to the meetings you saw this, is the fact that the incidence of brainworm as reported by the warden force when they're handling non-hunting mortalities, moose that are showing classic symptoms of brainworm and are eventually die or often maybe euthanized if they're in a situation where it's causing a human health hazard. That's been going up and as you can see by this graph to the last five or six years, it's altered to 50% of these non-hunting mortalities have been attributed to brainworm whereas the long-term average is around 7%. And we do know from other studies elsewhere that when deer densities on the landscape are greater than 10 deer per square mile, that there's often an increase in brainworm, incidence of brainworm mortalities and it can have an impact on the population. And this chart that our deer biologist Nick Ford put together shows in green the areas of the state that have our smallest deer densities or lowest deer densities. So fortunately for moose, at least they're at fairly low densities in the Northeast Kingdom. Managing the unity anyway in some of the mountain zones or one down here. But pretty much the rest of the state has fairly high deer densities especially in more southern parts of the state. And so that's where there's been a higher percentage of non-hunting mortalities and those other zones that are attributed to brainworm. So even though our tick levels as measured on harvested moose over the last four years have been very low outside of the Northeast Kingdom, our new populations are facing increased brainworm. So the department has initiated certain management actions, especially in recent years, of reducing permit numbers. This is the graph that shows the numbers of permits issued in green and the harvest of moose since the first hunt in 1993 when 30 permits were issued and 25 moose were taken. We reduced the herd intentionally starting with very high permit numbers in 2005 or so through 2010 and got it down to where we had around 3,000 moose in the state we felt we feel and we're able to issue 400 permits and that was the goal to sort of stay there. But as you can see by the graph things kept going down and we've reacted to the fact that our indices for the moose herd size most of them been declining year after year. And so not only have we come to you with proposals to reduce permit numbers but we came to you in 2015 to go pretty much bulls only throughout most of the state and that was the second major management action that the board has taken and last year it was virtually bulls only everywhere. Despite that the population estimate based on the annual deer hunter effort survey has continued to go down when you look at each individual wildlife management unit multiply the siting rate by our regression equation times the area and add them all up it's still has gone down through the last several years. However if you look at that siting rates up in the management unit E E1 and E2 subunits as Scott mentioned on the phone here it looks like it's been declining over time and it has but if you look at just a subset of that the more recent years and graph that and these are graphs that Katie put together you can see that it's really has stabilized there. Last year we had a point that you know went out from the previous year and it's gone up a couple times so if you look at this five or six year period statistically it's pretty much leveled off there but overall the statewide population estimate is lower I think maybe about a thousand moose from what it was last year. The bulls only hunting we've explained to the board when we first introduced this in 2015 that you're running a risk of altering this adult sex ratio on the landscape if you keep taking bulls and cows aren't dying at a similar rate that you could skew the sex ratio so that th