APPROVED Natural Resource Committee Meeting Monday, June 1, 2015 Tribal Council Chambers

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APPROVED Natural Resource Committee Meeting Monday, June 1, 2015 Tribal Council Chambers 1. Call to Order: Meeting was called to order by Chairman George Siniscal at 3:35 pm. 2. Roll Call: Roll call was taken with 5 present and 2 absent.

1 APPROVED Natural Resource Committee Meeting Monday, June 1, 2015 Tribal Council Chambers 1. Call to Order: Meeting was called to order by Chairman George Siniscal at 3:35 pm. 2. Roll Call: Roll call was taken with 5 present and 2 absent. Committee Members Present: Chairman George Siniscal; Vice Chairman Dennis Tufts; Danise Barker, Heather Walker and Bensell Breon, Jr. Committee Members Absent: Robert Kentta and Perry Johnson. Others Present: Mike Kennedy, Natural Resources Manager; Rosie Williams, Natural Resources Administrative Assistant; Jeanne Spaur, Wildlife Biologist and Stan van de Wetering, Aquatics Program Leader. 3. Approval of Agenda: MOTION: Dennis Tufts moved to approve the June 1, 2015 agenda. Seconded by Heather Walker. Motion approved by consensus. 4. Approval of Minutes: MOTION: Dennis Tufts moved to approve the May 11, 2015 minutes with no corrections. Seconded by Heather Walker. Motion approved by consensus. 5. Sam Creek #4 Environmental Assessment (Recommendation to TC): Mike passed out the Sam Creek #4 EA document to the committee for review. The committee reviewed the information. Mike said Sam Creek #4 is the next timber sale. Mike showed the committee on a map where the unit is located. Mike said all the roads for this sale are already in place. Mike showed the committee on a map which units were harvested previously out of the Sam Creek block. Mike said this will be the last sale in this block. Mike showed the committee on a map where the streams are located and explained which streams have 100 foot buffers or 50 foot buffers depending if those streams are fish bearing. Mike said there are 81 acres total and of those we plan to harvest 59 acres. There are 21 acres of buffers and about 1 acre of existing roads and landings. George asked Mike how big the trees are in this sale. Mike explained to the committee on a map which areas had younger smaller trees and older larger trees. Danise asked Mike what species the trees are. Mike said majority of the species consists of Douglas- fir and hemlock. Mike said about 3 million board feet is expected to be harvested which will cover portions of both the 2016 and 2017 allowable cut targets. Mike said there are two alternatives. Alternative A is the no action alternative which will leave everything as is. Alternative B is the regeneration harvest where we would clear cut harvest except stream buffers. Mike said if all goes well with the different approval process steps then this unit plans to be harvested this fall and winter. Stan asked Mike what agencies are involved with the approvals in comparison to how he has to get things approved for his programs. Mike explained the process 1

2 and which agencies are involved. Stan asked Mike about some improvement projects that were completed during the past harvests at Sam Creek. Mike updated Stan on the different projects that were completed successfully. Mike asked the committee which alternative they would like recommended to tribal council. MOTION: Dennis Tufts moved to recommend to Tribal Council that Alternative B (Regeneration Harvest) be selected as the preferred alternative. Seconded by Heather Walker. Motion approved by consensus. 6. Natural Resources Manager s Report: Mike informed the committee that tribal council has approved their request for a workshop with them and the date is set for June 22 nd. Mike said it is important that a majority of the committee attend the workshop. a. Aquatics: Stan said he has done a bunch of grant writing the last couple months and just got unofficial word that we ll get funding for shellfish work. Mike said we re hoping we got the funding for this but we really don t know for sure. Stan said that ODFW is in agreement to help us with this grant. Stan said he put in for some grants to do some wetlands work on some local properties as well. b. Wildlife: Jeanne said she put in for a grant to be able to hire a part time technician and intern. They would be training for marbled murrelet, tree vole and spotted owl surveys so that in time the tribe could take those over and not have to contract out for it. Jeanne said they ll be setting up acoustic monitors next week at Tahkenitch for the bat monitoring and she will be attending a hands on training in July. c. Hunting and Fishing: Mike said the Youth Antlerless Elk applications are available now and are due July 1 st. The drawing will be held for that at the next meeting. Last year, both youth that drew a tag ended up filling them. Mike passed out the Shellfish Harvest Report for the committee to review. Mike said Rosie called everyone who had a shellfish permit issued to them to get the results of what was harvested. Mike said there were 97 permits issued and only 25 of them were actively used. Mike said this report will be given to ODFW as well. Mike said Willamette Falls is open now for eel harvesting until the end of July. We have the permits and harvest cards available. Stan asked Mike how the restrictions of harvesting at marine gardens and marine reserves work. Mike said those areas are off limits. There are marine gardens for example at Otter Rock, Yaquina Head and Cape Perpetua. There are marine reserves for example at Cascade Head, Boiler Bay, and Whale Cove. George asked if those area have a specific description. Mike said they do and read off some examples listed in the state regulation book. d. Environmental Protection: Mike said Tom doesn t have anything new to report. e. Forestry: Mike said the Sugus Hill #2 stumpage rates were reluctantly approved by the committee at the last meeting and were even more reluctantly approved by tribal council but they ended up bumping up the rate by 6%. So that sale will be advertised soon and the bid due date will be July 23 rd. This sale could start as soon as September and will have to be completed by the end of March. Mike said Sam Creek #4 Road Betterment bids will be going out for various projects. There will be some road betterment projects going on at Tahkenitch and Arnold Creek with some brushing on the mainlines and hopefully some spurs. Mike said the next sale that will be worked on is Yaquina. Mike said Jay and the crew are getting out doing the boundaries and buffers on that right now. Mike said Kevin and Jeremy are doing stand exams on the Reed Creek property looking at which areas need to be precommercially thinned. Mike said hopefully all the gate locks to tribal properties will be replaced by the end of the week. f. Realty: Mike said fee-to-trust work is being continued with Arnold Creek II and Logan Road. 7. Committee and Tribal Member Concerns: George asked Mike how much wood is left for elders woodcuts. Mike said there is probably enough for one more cut and then he ll have to figure out how tribal members can get 2

3 access to the Long Prairie woodcut area. Dennis said there are piles of wood along the highway from ODOT that should be check out. Mike said he has checked on that stuff before and the answer was pretty much that they re not available. --- BREAK at 4:30pm RESUMED at 4:55pm Annual Meeting with ODF&W and OSP: George asked everyone to introduce themselves. Introductions were as follows: George Siniscal, chairman of the natural resources committee; Dennis Tufts, vice chairman of the natural resources committee; Stan van de Wetering, aquatics program leader; Jeanne Spaur, wildlife biologist; Danise Barker, natural resources committee member; Heather Walker, natural resources committee member; Todd Thompson, Oregon State Police; John Spangler, ODFW; Nick Leonetti, ODFW; Bensell Breon; natural resources committee member; Mike Kennedy, natural resources manager; Steve Rumrill, ODFW; Caren Braby, ODFW; Shannon Hurn; ODFW; Steve Marx, ODFW; Rosie Williams, natural resources administrative assistant. 3 Nick Leonetti said there aren t any changes in the number of tags available this year, it will remain the same for next season. The only change is cow elk are no longer being allowed to be harvested by archery hunters or disabled hunters. There will be no cow harvests in either Stott or Alsea units unless you have an actual special cow tag. There is no longer any cow harvests allowed for disabled hunters. Nick said they ve seen a lot of animals in places they like to see them, so that looked pretty good. They ve seen a lot of elk in national forest thinnings which they haven t seen in the years past. They ve seen them not just in pasture lands but pretty well distributed throughout the landscape. They ve counted 31 cows per hundred and 11 bulls per hundred so the bull count is a little low. The calf ratio is a little low as well. They like to see mid to high thirties and right now they re at low thirties. Nick said the deer population is kind of spotty. They ve seen improvement with the hair loss problem but they re still seeing a lot of deer in the pasture lands rather than distributed throughout forest lands. The deer population is still overall declining and is not rebounding yet. Nick said there aren t any big changes that have taken place but if anyone has any questions they can ask any time. George asked Nick how the elk population is doing. Nick said it s not as bad as it was but the numbers are still decreasing. There are some different disease issues going on but things are getting better. Nick said fire season is going to be pretty tight this year. The forecast is pretty dry. Mike Kennedy passed out the Harvest Report to everyone. Mike said there were 40 deer harvested and 12 elk harvested which is actually a little more than last year. Jeanne Spaur said she did some marten monitoring work where she set up three live trap stations and cameras at different locations around the Siletz area. She said they didn t get any sign of martens but will be doing the same set up at Tahkenitch hopefully getting better results for next year. Jeanne said she is also working on coastal bat species monitoring and she ll be putting up three acoustic monitors next week. She said she will be going to a bat handling training. Jeanne said she is waiting to hear back about the threatened and endangered species grant which will help with training someone to do our monitoring work that is currently being contracted out for. Jeanne said that s pretty much everything that is going on other than continuing to work on partnerships. John Spangler passed out an update summary to everyone. John said the Chinook forecast is down a little bit from last year. We might not have as good of a return but still a solid return. There are some changes with the coastal multi species plan with Siletz Chinook that Stan was involved in developing. The early season returns which are essentially called the springers, there were some wording issues in the regulations about how many springers people could keep. The confusion was that people thought they could only keep two fish the whole

4 season but we changed the wording so that people understood they could keep two wild springers for the season and as many of the hatchery springers as they want. The fall season opens up August 1 st and goes until October 6 th with the deadlines being from the mouth up to Ojalla bridge. The deadline will change to Illahee starting October 7 th until the end of the year. Stan van de Wetering asked John if they can put up new signs outlining the new seasons and deadlines.? He thinks people get confused when they see the old signs. John said he could look into it and could probably get them up at the main areas. John asked Stan if he could him the language he would like to see on the signs. Stan said he would. John said there is a general down turn on the number of fish next year and probably the next few years because the ocean has been pretty warm and it s effecting the number of fish returning from the ocean. John said the Coho numbers look really good. Last year they were all over and the forecasted amount was actually a lot lower than what was actually seen. The Coho numbers should be just as good this year. The Siletz fisheries are pretty stable and should be able to get a full season on the Coho. The regulations are the same for Coho which is one a day or two per year. The steelhead trend looks pretty good and should be comparable to last year. There was a little bit of a down turn with summer steelhead in the trap and we just didn t see the numbers we thought we would. The winter steelhead look better and we re seeing a lot more wild fish district wide. John said they will continue the food share program the same they have in the past. The first few weeks they ll be recycling them back into the river and then they ll start contacting the tribe probably by the end of this month. They are down to only three staff members for the district so Derik will be handling the food share program with help from volunteers. Stan asked John if they ll be doing it Monday, Wednesday and Friday like last year. John said because they are short on staff they will only be doing it Mondays and Thursdays but when they get more staff they can start doing it Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Stan asked John if they have plenty of volunteers. John said they have a few volunteers that come in regularly but not a lot. Stan said he could possibly help out with that this summer. John said that would be great. John said the summary has the number of fish distributed to the tribe for food share. John said there are a couple habitat restoration projects going on. There s a life cycle monitoring project going on at the Mill Creek drainage site. It s been monitored about the last 18 years. There s a lot of research going on with log placement, fish movement and their response to restoration. John said the tribe put in a request to change one of the cultural fishing sites from Dewey Creek to Drift Creek and that s been approved. John said the tribe will be receiving a letter in the next couple weeks explaining that the request was approved and the conditions involved. We don t need to go through the commission process for it so it s a much easier approach to send a letter to the tribe. Since it is county property, they did call the county to let them know they were approving this and should get a phone call from them for approval as well. Stan said they got the annual permit to take lamprey eels from the Willamette and since the Willamette has been kind of a disaster this year he thinks they re going to be interested in collecting some eels. Stan said they ve been counting eel beds and it looks really good, actually about 4 to 5 times more than the last time they counted eel beds about 10 years ago. John asked Stan to call him to coordinate days when they decide to go to get eels. Stan said he would. Stan said they ve been working with the Willamette Wildlife Mitigation programs for land acquisitions. Steve Marx explained that the Wildlife Mitigation program is basically helping to restore conservation habitats across the valley by allowing tribes and other groups to obtain land acquisitions. Stan said they were looking at a property near Eugene but ended up pulling their application for that property because the property owner just became too difficult to work with. Stan said they ve also been looking at properties over in Wren. They plan on identifying priority sites here in the Siletz area and possibly Yaquina. Stan said they re moving on to restoration projects and trying to put together proposals with restoration as their main focus. They will continue to partner with ODFW on mainstem restoration. They are putting in a lot of requests for funding and will continue to look for additional opportunities. Stan said he s glad to hear about the Drift Creek site being 4

5 approved. They did get to do some survey work at Drift Creek. Stan said they ve put in for a large grant from BIA to hopefully be able to hire a shellfish biologist that would essentially be working with Steve Rumrill s group that are doing shellfish sampling and essentially expand their work. Mike Kennedy said we only had 5 salmon harvested this year. Mike said we ll be acquiring some additional land at the 5 Mile property. He said McKenzie River Trust is the actual applicant but will be transferring the land over to the tribe and then we will have 18 months to figure out a management plan. Caren Braby passed out a summary on shellfish updates to everyone. Caren said early this year in January there were several representatives from local, tribal and other agencies that gathered in an effort to bring together management partners to work on ocean resources. There were great discussions at that gathering and a lot of people showed concern for ocean acidification. There continues to be conversations between all the groups on how to come together on these issues. There was also a recent discussion about Oregon hosting a National Sanctuary and there is still a lot of opposition to that concept. She said there was actually a resolution passed that said pretty much that Oregon is not interested in hosting a National Sanctuary at this time. This topic may very well go to the regional level but for now it s pretty well wrapped up. We are updating our Oregon Conservation Strategy which are documents that we file with the US Fish and Wildlife Service that make us eligible for state wildlife grants. Those documents will go through the final approval process in September. Caren said the Shellfish Species List will have some changes that will include eel grass and native oysters which are both important for marine habitats. Stan asked Caren how long the marine gardens will be monitored. Caren said it depends on the area. Steve Rumrill said it s really complicated to explain what s being done in each area and for how long. There s physical monitoring going on that includes work with submarines, and hook and line methods. There s also subtidal monitoring going on just keeping an eye on ecological communities with scuba divers. There s really a lot of different things going on. Stan asked Caren where the money comes from. Caren said it all comes from the legislature. It s funding that s already committed. Caren said there is also some money coming from the legislature to help with understanding the shellfish populations. Steve Rumrill said the information that he gathered on shellfish is on the summary and explained the numbers and how they came up with those numbers. Steve read through the information in the summary about what was harvested in Lincoln County and the most popular sites people gather from. Steve read through the summary and explained the different projects that they ll be doing. Steve wanted to remind everyone that we are currently closed for shellfish on the Oregon coast. Mike passed out the tribe s shellfish harvest report to everyone. Mike explained the numbers on the report and how we obtained that information. 5 Todd Thompson said because they were short on staff they ve been pretty much playing catch up all year. They are still short on staff. They did get a couple recruits but have already lost one due to relocating and one is just now starting to go out on his own. They ll be getting a new person with good experience pretty soon and that will be a big help. Some other changes are that we will have a fisheries team of which he will be assigned to take charge of. There will be a lot of staff changes but it should all be good changes. Todd explained who will be taking over what. Todd said the elk seasons were pretty typical and ended up giving one to the tribe but nothing major. The only major issue that occurred was three elk poached out of season near the Bulls Bag property. There still hasn t been any major breaks in the case. The shellfish stuff has been going pretty smooth. No citations have been issued in regards to that. It s been pretty quiet and a lot of catch up work. Mike notified Todd that the tribe has changed all the gate locks to the various properties to key locks instead of combination locks. Shannon Hurn said they ve been working with collaring deer. Nick Leonetti said they ve been struggling to keep up with this project. They will start to do some more collars after the fawns have dropped. They ve also been doing some fecal DNA studies. All of this is helping them figure out what s going on with the different diseases.

6 He explained the process of collaring and the DNA studies. Shannon said they re also going to partner with OSU to do some work in relation to this as well. Steve Marx explained all the different staff changes they ve had and how the budget works in relation to the changes. Mike told everyone thank you for coming. 9. Next Meetings: July 6, August 10, September 14, October 5, November 2 and December 7. Elders Woodcuts: July 18, September Adjournment: Dennis Tufts moved to adjourn the meeting. Seconded by Heather Walker. Motion approved by consensus. Meeting adjourned at 6:30 pm. Attachments: (Original Only) Sam Creek #4 Environmental Assessment 2014 Siletz Tribal Shellfish Harvest Report Season Fish and Game Harvest Report ODF&W Shellfish Program update summary Siletz Fisheries Update 6

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