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Roll call, please.

Of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible for liberty and justice for all.

At this time, it's open up to public comment.

The public is invited at this time to provide uh comment on any topic that relates to a matter over which this public body has supervised control jurisdiction or advisory power, including any such matter that is not specifically included on the agenda as an action item.

No action may be taken on a matter raised during the period for public comment.

Do you have any public comment online?

Nothing.

Okay.

We'll move over.

For a possible action, approval of the minutes.

That the members present have an opportunity to review the minutes.

I get a motion.

I'll make a motion to approve May 4th meeting minutes.

I second the approval.

Is it what to call vote?

Yeah.

I get a vote.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All those in favor say nay.

Ayes have it.

Move on to number six would be for discussion only and update from attendees to the May 8th and 9th 2026 Nevada Wildlife Commission meeting.

And that was me.

And so just uh just a couple of things that it took down was that the technology committee is moving forward with looking at implementing uh implementation of e-tags for the future.

Um the department is uh trying to establish a crayfish population up in the cave lake, and when it's uh established, they're going to uh introduce smallmouth bass, which I thought was pretty cool, and then also department is looking into studying the uh construction of wildlife crossings in the south of Wales in the area of Spruce Mountain and in and around Pioche.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, it is and then uh also the department is going into an agreement with private landowners up in area seven to create the Windermeyer Hills Wildlife Management Area or conservation wildlife management area, which is up in uh 07.

Uh there was a discussion in regards that precipitation was near normal for this year, but it came in the form of water and or rain, water, of course, and uh and not snow pack, and currently uh at the time of the meeting um earlier last month uh that the snowpack was pretty much zero across the strait, across the state.

Uh, the concern for wildlife uh wild wildland fire was more centered around the amount of fuel rather than um drought conditions because we I guess from the rain, the grasses were growing more, and thus once that dries out, it just goes into it.

I thought it was pretty interesting.

They had was a discussion by biologists in regards to the uh to approximately 20% loss of shrubland or sage land within the state uh due to wildland fire, uh wildland fires.

Um was a pretty good presentation showing the amount of habitat that was lost to fire to a direct um decrease in the mule deer meal deer here, meal deer herd in the state, um, and then how mule deer are having a negative response and in regards to evasive annual grasses and the implication of a strategic management within the state for those, and there's uh active uh control plans for these annual evasive species.

Um, well, I don't know, it's a positive because of the increase in grasslands, uh, elk and antelope have benefited from it, as the deer have been negatively impacted.

Uh one of the things, uh, several of the cabs came during public speaking to urge the commission to take a stance or a stance on the control and management of the Feral Horse herds, and a c and a couple of the cabs out east have actually submitted letters to their county commissions to where that those counties declared a county emergency.

And then the commission also improved the regulation to prohibit the automatic range finding scopes and self-adjusting sites, and then they also accepted a petition from a Mr.

Evans in regards to removing the compound bowls uh let off limit, and now this is going to go to workshop.

Any questions?

Rob nobody has the input for that, but does anybody like anything to share in regards to urban wildlife?

All right, we move on to number eight for discussion only, uh, reports and informational.

Any item requiring action will be scheduled for a future agenda.

Would any of the board members like to pull an item for discussion?

Okay.

Yeah, I appreciate that, thank you.

You know, anything about the uh easement access, access easement that's going on.

I don't have anything to pull either.

Do we have to manage radio populations?

Sage grass.

Yeah, so let once we poll them for for discussion, we'll prove the ones that we're not addressing, and then we'll go into discussion for each one.

And we'll just open up for public.

Okay, if I could get a motion then to reapprove as written.

I approve.

Say aye.

Aye.

We'll move to the two items uh we wish to be polled.

Fiscal year twenty-seven found uh bond collaring project that's seventy thousand dollars.

Fiscal year twenty-seven Nevada in state prong horn trap and transplant seventy-five thousand dollars.

Strategic mapping and prioritization of Mule Habitat Nevada, year two, continuation of a hundred and twenty thousand dollars and then fiscal year twenty-seven, Raven management in Nevada assessing the impact of spatially variable ecological thresholds on Sage Grouse conservation efforts year two of a continuation of $60,000.

Is there any public comment regarding to any of that?

Well, if you want to move up, uh turn your mic on, state your name.

So Johnny Vonek, Nevada Department of Wildlife.

I'm the Washoe County game biologist, so similar to Carl, but just for Washoe County.

Um your initial question was do we have to manage ravens or or what is the purpose of the raven management?

Um so Pete Coates is a researcher with the USGS and he's been studying the relationship between ravens and sage grouse for about 30 years now.

And what he'd found is there's a threshold where when you have a certain density of breeding pairs of ravens, it has a negative impact on how many sagegrouse chicks will survive.

And so um through the past we thought that that number was constant, and um what Pete is looking to do here is he's looking to see if that threshold of number of breeding pairs of ravens changes across different ecological types, so maybe you know, leks that are closer to cities like the ones just above Reno may be able to have um different densities of ravens close to those leks compared to things that are you know way out far in northern Washoe.

But the the purpose of this money is to assess the feasibility of some of the raven removal efforts that we're doing, and if we are actually benefiting those sagegrouse lakes and actually seeing some sort of positive growth, um I'm involved a great deal with um turtle and tortoise conservation worldwide, and there is an incredible crop uh studies being done about raven population and baby tortoise um deaths, and that's why I'm interested in this because ravens are detrimental to baby tortoise populations.

That's why I was wondering how they were that you I was very interested that you're seeing this with the sage populations, and I was I'm very interested to know that they're seeing that in southern Nevada with baby desert tortoises with raven populations being a problem.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah, it's a very very big problem with with tortoises worldwide with ravens.

Yeah, uh Pete Coates, he actually developed something called a smart tool, and so what it does is it looks at different raven densities across the state of Nevada, and then you can look at distance to leck, and the whole point of that is to try and remove breeding pairs.

So we could go out and just you know, blanket remove ravens across the landscape.

But what he found is if you do that, you open up territory where you then get more ravens that are just infiltrating that area.

So if you remove the breeding pairs that are in and around the nests, you reduce the amount of predation on the chicks, but for sure we're seeing that with desert tortoise down south as well.

I know we I know they've been using drones and they they spray the eggs with um oil so they don't hatch, they do all kinds of things like that.

So I was just curious about what how that how that was really, if that was really that serious of a problem.

So, yeah, we're so it's big, it's a big problem elsewhere.

We're boiling thousands of eggs each year during leking season with corvicides, so it's uh it's a poison that is specific to CORVIDS so ravens, magpies, um, and crows, and then we'll place those eggs around the sage grouse lakes, the ravens will then come in and eat them, and then we can kind of target birds that are close to the lakes, but so this this money is to do the study, or is this money actually do the nope?

This is only for the study.

So a couple years ago when the predator fee got split apart where there's lethal versus the habitat research and management.

Um, because that's a lethal component, it that's part of the other three-dollar predator fee.

This is only studying the impacts of that raven removal.

Um, but within the predator plan, we still have raven removal that goes on for the protection of sage Krause.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, for sure.

Did you guys have any other?

Yeah, I'm just curious when they uh under the response to wildfire and a spatial variation of abundance using autonomous recording units.

Is this are they flying drones or is this some sort of static autonomous collection device?

What are we collecting?

Yeah, to be honest with you, I'm not I'm not as familiar with that HRM proposal or I see responsible.

Sorry, Becca Carniello, Nevada Department of Wildlife for the record.

I'm not sure which um which species they're looking at specifically, spatial variation of abundance, but they're just using their least little tiny recording units, and you can just stick them out while actually in Sage Brush, you kind of stick them on a pole and it records it's usually songbirds or bat calls, and then you can determine the um occurrence of those different species that are there.

Um I think that's what they're they're looking at, but I'm not sure which species they're looking at specifically.

That's pretty that's very interesting.

And then when we talk about instape uh pronghorn trap and transport transplant, they're just we're moving them from one area to another.

Oh yeah, just come on out, man.

We'll take it.

Just a Satan name again, please.

Yeah, Johnny Vonick, Nevada Department of Wildlife for the record.

I don't like that I can hear myself now.

Um, so yeah, in uh in parts of the state we have pronghorn that are bursting at the seams and we're having some issues um with private landowners where we're having you know upwards of 800 pronghorn camped out on the PX ranch.

They're normally pretty good about allowing hunters onto their place and allowing public access.

Um, but they expressed a lot of interest in moving some of those pronghorn elsewhere to kind of alleviate the burden on some of their alfalfa.

And so with that, instead of trying to come up with a depredation hunt right around the ranch, we figured why not try and get creative and move some of those doughs to other places um within the state.

So currently we're proposing to move um some of those from area six as well as from area um 043 to 046 to 041042, so kind of out in the Lovelock area.

Some will go into the pine nuts in 291.

Um, and then the other group will go into area 13, but I can't recall which which part of area 13, but trying to move them around to help some of the other herds out instead of having depredation dough hunts on a private ranch where there's gonna be congestion issues.

So it's since we're talking antelope now, like in uh or 401 or the love lock area, ripatch area, um is the horses still impacting the herds to the extent that they have been.

Yeah, um, this summer there's a gather scheduled for seven wings and blue trough or uh sorry.

Yeah, seven wings and blue trough uh is that uh the HMA that they're gonna pull horses out of.

So we're anticipating them pulling quite a few horses out of that HMA.

And then once that burden's relieved, then we're thinking fill that void with pronghorn and trying to.

So that's why you're moving them from both through oh no 43 and 46 north.

Yeah, exactly.

Into 041042.

As soon as they do the gather.

We won't do it until they're done together.

Yeah, because it's pretty horse rich.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm good.

I could ask questions all day, but I'm good.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Anything else you'd like to share before?

No, did you have questions on 10 L or will that be?

Oh, well, yeah, well, we can move on to 10 now if you just want to stay up.

The only the only thing I really want to bring up on 10 now is just to advise the public is is that there's a typo and the um uh in the uh agenda item because they list 64 twice rather than 61, 62, 64.

And that was just the one thing I just wanted to bring up.

If anybody was listening to this, that it's not the anybody that huts birds up in 61 that it's still open.

But other than that, I I guess I guess the only question I would ask is: has the department thought about ever extending upland by another week to move it like one more week beyond Oregon?

Yeah, Johnny Vonick, Nevada Department of Wildlife for the record.

So we had a pretty lengthy discussion this year at our upland game season setting meeting.

Uh initially there was some concern with how dry the the season's been.

Sure, we've been getting precipitation, but it's been in the former rain.

And then last year we had pretty poor chucker and quail production.

We're anticipating another year of pretty poor chucker and quail production.

So we kind of tossed around the idea.

Do we push the season one week later?

Do we push it earlier?

What do we do with the season?

Um ultimately we ended up moving it one week later because there's a study that Randy Larson did through Utah showing that um people I hate to say pounding, but people hitting birds really heavily that first week when they're really tied to water can have an additive impact, and you can really hurt some of those populations at a local scale.

Um we then argued, or you know, not argued, but tossed around the idea of pushing that season a week later.

However, um in the event that we do get heavy snowfall, it congregates those birds down lower on the mountain, and then that last week of the season, you could have a similar effect where they're really concentrated down low and people could clean up on them, so to speak.

Uh, the other thing that we discussed is that um we already in Nevada start to see birds pairing up the last week of the chucker season.

And so once those uh uh pair bonds are made, we don't really want to be, you know, harvesting those birds after they've paired up because that's gonna have some impacts for their reproduction the following year.

So if we push that one week later into the season, there's a chance that you know we might be impacting those breeding pairs even further.

So we're trying to trying to be sensitive to the fact that we're having a pretty poor water year by delaying the season a week, um but not increasing it and having it run further into February.

And then um also looking at the number of calendar days, uh it's the same number of days as last year with the way that the season falls, it's just that it starts a little bit later in October this year.

Oh, good enough.

Thank you.

But yeah, I mean, totally valid question, and we we toss those ideas around, and I mean, you have guys like me, I love hunting late season, right?

Yeah, but you can have an impact as they're starting to, you know, like you kick them up the last week of the season and there's they're paired up already.

Yeah, you know, I never had the consideration, and the only reason I thought it was like last year I or earlier this year, I was down in Arizona uh chasing burns, and I was like, I left like the end of January and it's like end of January.

It's like, okay, I got I won't be able to catch a few more days of chucker, and I got here, was like, what do you mean the season's over?

And it's like, oh, it's the first weekend in the February.

The other the other point that was brought up in the meeting is several of the surrounding states close at a similar time.

So if all of a sudden Nevada is open, you know, one week later, then you draw a whole lot of attention from Utah, California, and and a whole bunch of non-residents fleeing or you know, pushing into the state.

Yeah, I get it.

It makes makes total sense to me.

Total sense.

Norris Kirk, any further questions?

I think the hell's our pheasant population doing so uh after the 2022-23 winter, um, the paradise valley was insane with pheasants.

It was it was a pretty crazy chick year for most of the upland species, and it seemed like you couldn't drive down the road without bumping into a pheasant.

Um, since then, we've had, you know, a couple of poor recruitment years, and they've kind of slowly tapered off a little bit.

For Mason Valley, they really are are struggling.

The few birds that are are left out there.

They had good chick recruitment in that 22-23 winter, but then um the habitat's just not there.

A lot of that um Mason Valley wildlife area is kind of grown up a little bit more in terms of like the brush that's in there, and it doesn't seem to be as conducive for pheasants compared to like for turkeys.

It's it's doing good.

We're doing really well on turkeys right now.

Um similarly, I think a lot of the agriculture that used to have you know all sorts of edges and and phenomenal habitat down in in Mason Valley has kind of been converted to where now we're farming edge to edge on the field, and there's not much cover crop left for pheasants, and then converting a lot of it to stuff that's less desirable for pheasants, like onions and garlic.

Um you kind of have a net loss for birds.

So they're down a little bit.

Um I can't say that we're we have a super bright outlook for for pheasants, but um if you're after them, I'd probably target Paradise Valley is gonna be your best bet.

Thanks.

Yeah, for sure.

Um we're good, we're good.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

With the information provided today in regards to uh action items 10 D and 10 L.

Can I get a motion to approve?

I'll make a motion to approve.

I'll second.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye, aye.

Ayes have it.

Move on.

That leads us to the uh end of consent agenda.

Uh number none of the items polled.

I will forward us over to the chairman.

Um move to number 12 for discussion only.

The Carson City Advisory Board.

Oh, back.

Let me go back.

Do we have any public opinion?

Any of that?

Is it not?

For discussion on item number 12 for discussion only.

The Carson City Advisory Board to Manage Wildlife will discuss members' commitments to the meetings on June 26th and 27 in Winnemucca, and in August 14th and 15th in Tonopah.

I know I will be unavailable this weekend.

I will be in Colorado.

I am also unavailable this weekend, but I can actually go in August to Tonopah.

Perfect.

I'm out of town in June, so I don't know what August looks like, but we'll have to come back to that later.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I'll I'll get a hold of um members beamer and just very paper lack Corbett.

And then an item number 13 for discussion only.

Is there any future agenda items from the board members?

I don't have any.

Johnny Vonick, uh Nevada Department of Wildlife.

Uh to my knowledge, no, we're not.

We currently do not have um cyanide bombs out there.

I did see the legislation that you're talking about that made it to where those could be used on public land, but currently any of the predator projects that we have with wildlife services, um, that's not a method that they're using.

Okay, so they're not legal to use in the state of Nevada.

I'm not sure about whether they're legal or not, but we uh our contract with wildlife services does not have that as a legal method currently.

Okay, all right.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, for sure.

And that moves us on to item number 15 for possible action to adjourn.

I get a motion to adjourn.

I'll make a motion to adjourn.

A second.

All those in favor?

Say aye.

Aye, aye.

So eyes have it.