Advisory Council Meeting Minutes
January 24, 2007 – 9:30 a.m.
Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Headquarters
Upstairs Conference Room, 284 State Street, Augusta
Attending:
Roland D. Martin, Commissioner
Paul F. Jacques, Deputy Commissioner
Andrea Erskine, Assistant to the Commissioner
Marc Michaud, Director, Information and Education
Ken Elowe, Director, Bureau of Resource Management
Mark Stadler, Division Director Fish and Wildlife
John Boland, Director, Fisheries Operations
Peter Bourque, Director, Fisheries Program Development
Jim Pellerin, Fisheries Biologist, Region A
Colonel Tom Santaguida
Becky Orff, Secretary and Recorder
Council Members:
Bos Savage – Chair
Ron Usher
Lance Wheaton
Dave Wardwell
Joe Clark
Sheri Oldham
Stephen Philbrick
Mike Witte
Ray Poulin
Guests:
Frank Dunbar, Bucksport
Harold Brown, former Advisory Council member
Gary Corson, New Sharon
Don Kleiner, ME Bowhunters Assoc. & NWTF
J.R. Maybee, Vice President, Grand Lake Stream Guide Assoc.
Bob Upham, Grand Lake Stream Guide Assoc.
Oscar Cronk, Wiscasset
Skip Trask, MTA & MPGA
Pat Keliher, Atlantic Salmon Commission
Kevin Miller, Bangor Daily News
I. Call to Order
Bos Savage, Council Chair, called the Council meeting to order.
II. Introductions
Introductions were made.
III. Acceptance of Minutes of Previous Council Meeting
Motion made by Mr. Clark and seconded by Mr. Wheaton to accept the minutes of the previous Council Meeting as written.
Vote: All in favor – minutes accepted as written.
IV. Rulemaking
A. Step 3
There were no Step 3 items.
B. Step 2
1. Bear Trapping Rules
Mr. Elowe stated the rule had been advertised and the comment period was open. This came from a stakeholder committee that was required by the Legislature to look at bear management methods in the State. This was not a recommendation of the Committee but it was discussed and became a recommendation of the Department to go forward with rulemaking. There had been no changes to the proposal since it was last presented to the Council.
Council Member Questions and Comments
Commissioner Martin stated that the proposal was creating some excitement. He asked Mrs. Erskine if a letter had been received from the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine.
Mrs. Erskine stated yes and that she also had received 4 e-mails in opposition to the rule change, 1 neither for nor against, and 1 in support.
Mr. Philbrick asked if there was a letter from SAM to IF&W stating their position that the Council could look at.
Mrs. Erskine stated yes. The comment deadline was February 16 and she was going to wait to forward comments to the group.
Commissioner Martin asked Mrs. Erskine to read SAM’s letter to the group for the record.
Mrs. Erskine read the letter (see packet).
Mr. Clark asked if SAM had been part of the bear working group?
Mr. Elowe stated yes.
Mr. Philbrick stated he was a little disappointed that SAM and other groups hadn’t recognized or understood that there was some common sense that needed to be applied to these particular rules and he thought the Department was doing that. Extracting 2 traps out on opening day managed bear populations better than putting 2 traps out with the potential of getting 2 bears; what do you do with the second bear? He thought it was a great attempt to streamline the rules and get them so that it was more acceptable across the board. Secondly, the barbaric notion of the particular trap that we were extracting, he also thought was a good move.
Mr. Poulin asked of those that were opposed to this were separating the two traps to one as one issue, and leg hold traps as a separate issue or were they looking at them together?
Commissioner Martin stated SAM’s letter was pretty generic and just opposing it in principal. No, they were not making comments on one versus the other.
Mr. Wheaton stated he felt we were fighting this year after year, how many times was this going to come back? We would do this to appease, but you couldn’t trap bear where there weren’t any. There may not be bear in downtown Portland, but there were in his area. Some people made their living trapping them and he thought it was a right of Maine to pursue that. He could see going from 2 traps to 1, but we couldn’t let people manage bear trapping and hunting that never see them.
Mr. Elowe stated he wanted to make a clarification. This was not to appease anybody. What we try to do is manage the best way possible and the Legislature asked us to make improvements in the bear management methods. That’s the basis of the proposal. He felt this would make the program better and more defendable. That was the bottom line question asked of everybody on the stakeholder group, “will this make bear management better tomorrow than it was yesterday?” That was the basis for every issue they discussed.
Mr. Cronk stated he was born in 1930 and had hunted and trapped since he was 8 or 9 years old. He had trapped all over the state and currently had a camp in the St. John/Allagash region and had trapped there many winters. He was the president of the Maine Trappers Association (MTA) for many years. He ran an outdoor supply business and trapping was probably one of his main things. He could go along with the 2 traps down to 1, but as far as removing the bear foot trap, that didn’t make sense to him at all. To him it was just an appeasement, and you couldn’t appease any of the anti groups.
Mr. Cronk stated that back in the 70’s Bud Leavitt, the outdoor writer, had him on a televised program. Traps were being attacked then like they are today. Mr. Cronk brought a trap to prove what happened to an animal when it’s in a trap. He took a #4 and let it go on his hand and sat with it on his hand for 25 minutes throughout the program. Taking the trap off he had a couple of marks and told Mr. Leavitt that he wouldn’t have any feeling in his fingers, they would be numb. This is what happens to an animal after ½ hour or so. Within an hour if they start to chew its because they have no feeling in that limb whatsoever. In defense of trapping you know what happens to the animal. He thought it was wrong to say we could not use a foot trap. If it was wrong to use a foot trap on bear, it should be wrong for the rest of the animals and we would lose one of our management tools.
Mr. Savage asked Mr. Cronk how he felt about the effectiveness of the trap that was being allowed, the snare/foothold trap?
Mr. Cronk stated it was a good trap but he didn’t think it was 100% humane in the sense that it would do some damage to the bear’s foot.
Mr. Trask stated that his comments were quite lengthy, and had already been received by the Department in writing. Mr. Trask read excerpts from the comments submitted (see packet). Mr. Trask stated the MTA had been working hard to destroy the myth that’s continually being circulated by the animal activists that Maine trappers typically use archaic and obsolete equipment when trapping for bears and other wild animals. We know that some steel jawed foothold traps are not suitable for trapping bears and we believe the rule should make it clear that the use of those obsolete traps is illegal. The Department, however, didn’t have any information on what traps were being used and whether or not some of the traps were as suitable as cable traps. The MTA would like to see more information collected by the Department on the number of bear trappers, their efforts and the equipment they use to develop the best management practices (BMP) for bear trapping. Once those BMPs are developed, if there are foothold traps that meet or exceed BMP standards, MTA would like to see the Department reconsider and legalize whatever foothold traps would satisfy BMP standards. In the interim, although not necessarily crazy about it, MTA understood the risk if they did nothing.
Mrs. Oldham asked a question of Mr. Elowe. He said that the Department proposal at Step 2 made bear management better; how does the snare trap make it better over the foothold trap?
Mr. Elowe stated he was using management in the broadest sense. There’s a management side, there’s a biological side and there’s a methods of take side, and that’s what the Legislature charged us to do; look at the methods of take and make it better. We have a tremendous amount of data using cage type live traps and the cable traps. Bear researchers all over the world have used them and thousands of bears have been trapped with both of those devices. We have good information on them. We know how they treat bears if properly set. That was the basis for this recommendation. That didn’t mean there weren’t some other good implements out there potentially, but we didn’t know what they were right now.
Mrs. Oldham stated that once something was taken away it was very hard to get it back. From the discussion it appeared there were some foothold traps that were very acceptable measures of take. It would seem to be a big leap to eliminate all foothold traps with the hope that maybe we could get it back in the future because we wouldn’t.
Mr. Elowe stated he agreed with that, but the process for all trapping, we’d been going through with other states and the NMTA and MTA a best management practice process. It took a tremendous amount of effort because it took all kinds of different devices being tested under field conditions of trapping, a lot of data being collected on each set, the type of staking device, the length of the chain, the kind of catch, the kind of injuries, rating the injuries against an objective scale and doing that in repetition 100’s of times. That had been done for coyote traps and several other traps. To do that for bear, we just don’t have it. We do have information about what’s good, and we know there are some that are definitely bad, and we had to make a decision for the future of bear trapping, did this make it better or worse? It was incomplete but substantial information.
Mrs. Oldham stated that based on Mr. Elowe’s comments she was leaning, at Step 2, that there seemed to be general agreement that setting 1 trap made sense. It also made sense to have a clear best practices plan and she didn’t think they had that. She was worried about taking something away completely where there was equipment that would make it acceptable and comparable to the snare traps.
Mr. Witte stated that being a trapper and using off-set jaws and so on, had any research been done on the types of foothold traps where we could say the trap must be limited to an off-set trap with rubber jaw liners or the cable has to be 10-feet long with 3 swivels in it and so on to regulate as a compromise and to get rid of some of these so called barbaric old steel jawed handmade type traps? Had that been explored?
Mr. Elowe stated that it hadn’t. We hadn’t had the capability to go through that process.
Mrs. Oldham asked if we could eliminate the part that was bad?
Mr. Elowe stated that we didn’t know enough to make that decision.
Commissioner Martin stated that there were a couple of options. We could move forward at Step 3 in a different form or fashion. We could eliminate or modify a portion of this that there seemed to be an objection on. Another option would be to not move forward at all. The third option was what was before them and move forward and hope for the best. He was in total disagreement with George Smith’s comment (letter from SAM) when he stated “it appears that the proposal before us is based on political considerations rather than science.” That was totally false. Based on the science and information, as we know it today, what the Department was proposing was the right thing to do for many reasons. The biology suggested it, although we don’t have the capability or resources to study the entire issue. There are a lot of other considerations that needed to be discussed. There was a lawsuit the Department was dealing with that had a lot of implications; there was Legislation and if we move forward with the proposal, would that be enough to dissuade our Committee of Jurisdiction to not move forward with any legislation that is anti-bear trapping or baiting.
Mr. Philbrick asked if it were possible to craft the wording so that it gave the Department the opportunity to readdress; include what is currently acceptable in trapping venues and give the Department the opportunity to look at future acceptable trapping footholds and not close it off to just one kind?
Commissioner Martin stated yes. If the proposal moved forward we could include a sunset provision.
Mr. Philbrick stated there was a feeling that trapping was in jeopardy. It seemed to him we had to address this with new technology.
Mr. Wheaton stated he felt the whole object was to annihilate trapping. If this should continue and go to the Legislature, would it create a Department within a Department? Nuisance animals at dumpsters all over the state, would we have to have a bear trapping organization at IF&W and who would fund the trapping to take care of all those nuisance animals?
Mr. Poulin asked how many bear were taken by foothold traps?
Mr. Elowe stated less than 200 taken by bear traps. We did not know by what type of trap the bears were taken.
Mr. Cronk stated he had spoken with George Smith, and he was to speak for SAM. Comments made by Mr. Elowe and Mr. Trask regarding obsolete traps; what did they consider an obsolete trap?
Mr. Trask stated there was no definition, but they had seen traps out there that they wouldn’t set to catch a bear.
Mr. Cronk stated there should be a standard and the Department should inspect the trap before it was set.
Mr. Witte stated that hound hunting came right along with this. We didn’t want to lose sight of the fact that hunting with hounds could be viewed as very cruel. We had traps, hound hunting and bait and his concern was that every year we’d be addressing another issue.
Mr. Poulin asked Mr. Elowe if we were the only state that allowed foothold traps for bear?
Mr. Elowe stated we were the only state that allowed bear trapping.
Mr. Poulin stated that gave political ammunition to the opposition. In essence, he would take the position that they couldn’t not do something in the Council to make an impact before the Legislature dealt with it. He felt they were all in agreement with 1 trap, and they had to determine whether or not they wanted to put forth an effort for best practices techniques and use a sunset provision to determine that.
Mr. Clark stated that he agreed with Mr. Poulin and Mr. Philbrick that we needed to have something for ammunition against the Legislature. The Council needed to have a sunset provision for a 2-year period to see how things were going.
Commissioner Martin stated there were at least 3 L.D.s that had enough language to limit trapping. The comment deadline on the proposal was February 16, and the next Council meeting would be February 21. Comments would be forwarded to members shortly after the 17th and then he would like to poll the group for input.
Mr. Elowe stated that we could use a sunset provision, but it may look like we’re just trying to get around the Legislature and the bills that were in front of it and then revert back to the old method. That should be taken into consideration also. We could always reconsider new devices.
Mr. Poulin asked Mr. Trask where the MTA stood in reference to a sunset provision and an analysis of the use of leg hold traps.
Mr. Trask stated that he had the power of the Board of the MTA. He wasn’t sure he’d put a sunset provision in the rule. What he would encourage the Department to do, and what the MTA intended to do is to work on the Department to collect the necessary information and necessary data and once that was done, if necessary, the MTA would petition the Department to reconsider adopting a rule that allowed some of the traps that met the standard. The MTA would fight this except for the fact that we know there are traps that are currently legal that shouldn’t be used. The MTA had an obligation to the future of trapping to make sure that these things weren’t used against us to destroy not just bear trapping but all trapping. At the next MTA meeting they were going to put together a committee to look at all traps. There were a lot of traps out there that shouldn’t be used to catch a fox or a coyote or anything else.
Commissioner Martin stated that on page 3 of MTA’s comments there were 3 bulleted items. That was the same information that was contained by the working group and as Mr. Elowe had alluded to earlier, we just didn’t have the resources to do that right now. Another option was when we submitted our proposal and moved forward we could make it conditional upon obtaining necessary resources from the Legislature. That would send a strong message.
Mr. Philbrick asked if it would be beneficial to form a working group to establish guidelines for foothold traps?
Mr. Elowe stated that was a good idea, but now was not the time.
Mr. Cronk stated he could see how you could have a standard on the bear foothold trap, but how would you go about having a standard on traps used for a weasel and so forth? Who was going to enforce that?
Mr. Savage stated that he understood what Mr. Cronk was saying; it probably was not completely enforceable. But, sometimes it was better to put rules in place knowing that a decent number would comply with the rule.
There were no further questions or comments.
2. Pleasant Lake, Caratunk – open to ice fishing
Mrs. Erskine stated that at the last meeting the Council was briefed on the petition that was received asking the Department to consider opening Pleasant Pond in Caratunk to ice fishing. A public hearing was held on January 11 and it was pretty well attended. The majority of people there were camp owners around the pond and spoke in opposition to opening it to ice fishing. Probably a handful of people there supported the proposal. The rule was still open for comment until January 26. Since comments had been mailed to the Council, Mrs. Erskine had received 6 additional comments in opposition and 15 in support. We did receive a copy of the boat launch lease agreement; access is a contentious issue on the pond.
Council Member Questions and Comments
Mrs. Oldham stated that when reading the minutes, her concern was safety. If you have ice fishing usually there are snowmobiles and there didn’t look to be enough ice.
Commissioner Martin stated that before the public hearing, he and staff traveled to the lake to look at it and get a feel for the area. There was no ice there at all on January 11. We are taking safety into consideration; it is an important factor.
Mr. Poulin stated that he had attended the public hearing, and had a few comments. There were some camp owners there in favor and there were number of things that were said in favor. Those that were opposed raised the issue about no public access to the lake, which makes us look at it; if there’s no public access to the lake then why do we stock it? The public access there is gated and controlled by the lake association. The question that came up during the discussion was that there was no general access. Their argument was there were no places to park cars, no places to leave vehicles without obstructing the roadway. The lease that is there is very specific about the Association having control of the boat landing; having the road that goes to the boat landing gated. You would have to get in touch with somebody to open the gate; it’s not open all the time. They talked about the safety problem, and Mr. Poulin stated that he fished Moosehead Lake and he couldn’t see where the safety problem was any worse on Pleasant Pond than it was at Moosehead or Sebago as far as open water during the ice fishing season. Water quality could be damaged or contaminated by trash and debris was another comment raised. One could argue that’s also true in the summertime. Introduction of illegal species was raised; that’s an issue all over the state. There was a discussion about protecting the trout; may cause over fishing of lake trout. Increased opportunity for camp vandalism; you can have vandalism caused by more people being there, but you can also have less vandalism because there are more people there around the lake looking on a regular basis at that time of the year. He felt there was little issue around that. Something else that was brought up was the low flushing rate. There was a gentleman there that spoke to the EPA’s low flushing rate of once every 10 years.
Mr. Savage stated that in reading the minutes of the public hearing, people’s concern was with a vehicle going through the ice and releasing gas and oil into the water and how long it would take that lake to cleanse itself versus a lake with a much higher flushing rate.
Mr. Poulin stated he agreed with that, but you would have the same chance for problems in the summer due to gas powered motors. One of the issues that was adamantly talked about was the safety issue if someone needed help at the camps, etc. The feeling that he had was that this was an issue of people wanting to protect bodies of water because their camps are on there as if they owned it. He still felt that the lakes belonged to the people of Maine and they should have access to the lakes. The question of ice fishing should be a strictly biological issue.
Mr. Savage stated that he agreed with Mr. Poulin that this was the State of Maine’s resource, and to him, this one boiled down to the access question. Access in general when it came to stocking the body of water.
Mr. Boland stated we had redefined and rewritten our stocking policy and tried to better define what adequate public access is to waters. He thought we were changing an opening date at Pleasant Pond because there was an issue with camp owners not maintaining and managing the gate until May. On the issue of ice fishing, we have a lake trout problem there. We’ve got our most liberal length and bag limit in effect there. With the current use in the summertime, they’re really not cutting into that population as much as we would like. As a result, we’ve had to change our stocking program from smaller brook trout to larger fall yearling brook trout because of predation. We do feel we would have an increased harvest probably resulting in a better balance of lake trout in the lake with ice fishing.
Mr. Poulin read item #3 on the lease…”The lease is for the purpose of allowing the Pleasant Pond Protective Association to construct a launch site for the purpose of launching and retrieving boats together with the construction of a gravel road from Fryer Lane to the access road to the boat launch shall be gated by the Pleasant Pond Protective Association, Inc.”
Mr. Boland discussed the phone system used there for gate access.
Mr. Poulin stated there was one question he felt was important to ask when doing an investigation about access; can you get access early in the morning (4:00 a.m.) or if you want to fish until dark?
There were no further questions or comments.
C. Step 1
1. Bass Tournament Rules
Mr. Boland stated a couple of years ago Rick Jordan may have come and spoke to the group about livewells. We adjusted the rules on bass tournaments to require the use and continuous operation of the livewells during bass tournaments. When we did that, a portion of the rule was inadvertently left out. We want to get that back in for the upcoming tournament season.
There were no questions or comments.
2. Horsepower Petition, Foss Pond, Kingsbury Plt.
Mrs. Erskine stated that we had received a petition from camp owners for a horsepower restriction of 6 h.p. or less on the pond. She had been told that there were only 17 year round residents in Kingsbury Plt. A public hearing had been scheduled in the town of Abbott.
Council Member Comments and Questions
Mr. Savage asked what the basis for the petition was?
Mrs. Erskine stated it looked like they were basing it on the size of the pond and the current use.
Deputy Commissioner Jacques stated it had to tie in with safety.
Mr. Savage asked if they were making a case for a safety issue.
Commissioner Martin stated we weren’t sure, we would find out at the public hearing.
Mrs. Erskine stated they were worried about increased water activity, especially large outboard motors.
There were no further questions or comments.
V. Other Business
1. Bald Eagle Essential Habitat
Mr. Elowe stated when we protect a nest site for bald eagles, for 15 years or more, we’ve been protecting bald eagle nest sites by putting about ¼ mile circle around them and saying that anything that requires a permit within that area gets reviewed by IF&W. That review means we can talk to the folks who are proposing a development project or forestry project to look at when the eagles are there and perhaps adjust the timing of their project for when the eagles aren’t there. In only 1 case, and that involved a LURC violation on an island, had a permit ever been denied. The proposal that was normally updated annually would not be moving forward. Last year’s proposal came to this process, went through the 3 steps, was consented by the Council, but was not filed within the 150 day time period that the APA requires by the State. We are bringing that proposal back in an expedited fashion. There is no new information, the towns already have the information, but we need to have a 30 day public comment period and a vote by the Council to legally get it reenacted. That’s why its listed under other business. We are pulling off this year’s proposal because we are very close to delisting eagles in the State of Maine. We have over 400 nesting pairs; we have enough pairs of bald eagles but we need our eagle biologist to spend time on permanent protection through conservation easements and management agreements with some of the existing nest sites, and then we’ll be able to take them off the list and not do essential habitat at all. The next time that Council sees this it will be at Step 3.
There were no further comments.
2. Bear Management by WMD (Council member request)
Mr. Elowe stated that this was a request by Council member Leo Kieffer at the last meeting. There was some discussion that started around the bear trapping issue and led to a discussion about why don’t we manage bear by WMD the same as we do deer, moose and some other critters like beaver. We don’t have the level of resolution of information to be able to manage by WMD, and there’s a good reason for that. The kind of information we can get is very different from what we have on deer and moose. Deer and moose, we have what is gathered during the hunt; we can take statistics off animals killed, the number killed, whether it’s a buck or doe, their age, etc. and many of those things we can measure from killed animals can tell us about the population and allow us to manage. There are enough deer, over 25,000 a year and enough moose killed in the areas that they’re killed to be able to do that. We kill between 2,800 and 4,000 bear per year scattered over the state, mostly in northern Maine. But, its not enough and there is no scientific data that we can take from bear that are killed that give us any kind of population information. Mr. Elowe stated it was tried 30 years ago and he was part of that effort.
Mr. Elowe stated the way we manage bear is to radio collar and tag females, keep track of their mortality rates, their birth rates of their cubs, the survival rate of their cubs and take several areas of the state and extrapolate that information. But, it doesn’t give us enough specific WMD information to do it district by district. It gives us state of the art information as far as bear management goes, but not on the level of resolution that we can mange district by district.
Council Member Comments and Questions
Mrs. Oldham stated that we killed the same number of bears as we kill moose; explain?
Mr. Elowe stated yes, but it was the kind of information we could collect. On moose we can collect information on the age of the moose, and on the reproductive rate. For many years we’ve collected ovaries on moose and we can look at what’s called corpora lutea, which are the scars from when eggs are produced and the number of cycles that a moose has gone through relative to its age, whether they produced young that actually developed that year or not. We can’t do the same thing with bear. The reproductive tract, the corpora lutea, doesn’t relate to the number of cubs produced, because bears have delayed implantation and they may produce eggs, they may fertilize those eggs, they may produce and embryo, but then self abort during the winter and not produce cubs the following spring. What we measure off a female bear carcass has no relevance to bear reproduction on the ground. That’s the bottom line on why we manage bears the way we do.
There were no further comments.
3. Draft letter to Committee regarding bear research
Mr. Elowe stated this stemmed from a recommendation that the Department made to the Fish and Wildlife Committee about work that needs to get done to help us manage bear better in the future. There were a lot of discussions at the stakeholders group meeting about the lack of information we had on the biological impact of baiting on bear. It was seen as a necessary piece of information, but not one the Department had resources for. The Council asked the Department to draft a letter, and that has been done. Mr. Elowe stated that he realized the price tag seemed big, but it was what was required if we were to do a credible job in doing this kind of work.
Council Member Comments and Questions
Mrs. Oldham stated she felt the letter might be more credible if the Committee had some idea what the study would entail. What would they be paying $200,000 per year for?
Mr. Elowe asked if she meant something like a conceptual budget? He could certainly do that.
Mrs. Oldham asked Mr. Elowe if he knew what he wanted to do with this study?
Mr. Elowe stated no, but this was what it would cost to put a project on the ground in general. The specific objectives made a big difference, the timetable, how many people it took on the ground, so he was conceptualizing this in very general terms.
Mr. Savage stated he would agree, if there was any level of detail that could be added to the letter it would be helpful. How many biologists for how many hours, something like that would be helpful.
Mr. Elowe stated he probably couldn’t do that because it would depend on the amount of work they were being asked to do on the ground would be more of the determinant.
Commissioner Martin stated it was his understanding that this was a letter that the Council asked the Department to draft for their consideration. Either the chair or the Council collectively would be signing the letter. The letter could be fine tuned with comments from the Council. Commissioner Martin asked Mrs. Oldham to work with Mr. Elowe on the letter.
Mr. Poulin stated he was in agreement with this, but after the discussion on bear trapping he thought they needed to be very careful how the letter was written. They couldn’t get any money without going through Appropriations Committee of Jurisdiction. He would encourage the wording to be very clear and not so much about trapping or about dogs or even about bear baiting as much as it was about pure bear research.
Mr. Elowe stated the whole reason for this was in response of bait, so it would be kind of hard to leave bear baiting out of this.
Deputy Commissioner Jacques stated that in lieu of the recent referendum, that was based on the biological and scientific information and data this agency had; now we wanted to be careful how we put that together so it didn’t come across that we didn’t have any data and now we were trying to get some money to do something.
Mrs. Oldham stated those concerns were definitely legitimate, but the question that was raised was what effect on bear biology does bear baiting have? The Department’s answer was, we don’t know. That’s the difference. It’s a question she thought needed to be legitimately answered.
Mr. Poulin stated that he didn’t disagree with that, but he thought they needed to be extremely careful about the wording.
There were no further comments.
4. Rainbow Trout Study
Jim Pellerin gave a PowerPoint presentation to the group (see packet).
Comments and Questions
Harold Brown asked how we were going to deal with the Federal issue with respect to the rainbows? For example, he happened to be a West Branch person and the Feds have said they weren’t going to allow rainbows in any of the Penobscot watersheds because of the presence of Atlantic salmon.
Mr. Pellerin stated we probably weren’t going to allow them there either. That would probably be one of his recommendations as a cautionary measure.
Mr. Boland stated that this was a program we were going to move very slowly and cautiously on and he thought Mr. Pellerin had done a terrific job seeing the project through from beginning to end. It would probably be a program that we’ll see in southern and central Maine.
There were no further comments.
VI. Councilor Reports
Councilors gave reports.
VII. Public Comments & Questions
Bob Upham stated he read the report on the smallmouth bass/alewife study that was done last year, and it didn’t change his mind on what we already knew. It verified a lot of things that were already known. They needed to study the waters where the problems were. They were studying other waters because it was convenient.
Harold Brown stated he would like to see the Department get hard nosed on bodies of water when it came to access. He discussed the Pleasant Pond access gate.
There were no further comments.
VIII. Agenda Items & Schedule Date for Next Meeting
The next meeting was scheduled for February 21 at 9:30 a.m. at the IF&W Headquarters in Augusta.
IX. Adjournment
Mr. Wardwell motioned to adjourn the meeting and Mrs. Oldham seconded that. The meeting was adjourned at 12:30 p.m.
