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Pueblo of Laguna Testimony 



House Sub-conunittee on Native American Affairs 



Re: Indian Fish and Wildlife Management/Enhancement 



March 1, 1993 



initiative sponsored in Fiscal Year 1990 by the Native American 

 Fish and Wildlife Society. This initiative resulted in the 

 submission of a total funding package to the U.S. Congress. 

 Unfortunately, our proposal was not funded. However, that did 

 not prevent us with moving ahead with our plan to initiate a 

 wildlife management program. In June of 1990, our Tribal Council 

 allocated $58,000 to establish the first tribal wildlife program 

 and thus began our first official effort to address our fishery 

 and wildlife management needs. 



Despite our limited funding and the fact that we have only two 

 Wildlife Conservation Officers to patrol 528,000 acres, we have 

 made great strides in our efforts to curtail illegal hunting 

 activities. We have also made excellent progress in re- 

 establishing our native big game populations. We have recently 

 transplanted pronghorn antelope to augment an existing herd in an 

 effort to increase productivity. These newly transplanted 

 antelope need to be protected or our efforts were in vain. We 

 are also in the process of doing similar transplants with mule 

 deer. We have also implemented a successful mule deer and elk 

 hunting program for tribal members. This system is currently 

 operating under a application/drawing basis as we cannot yet 

 accommodate all interested hunters. Because of our increasing 

 elk populations, we are also planning to open the elk hunt to 

 non-tribal members as well. Because of this hunting program, we 

 need to expand the collection of biological information so that 

 sound harvest strategies can be developed. 



Prior to transplanting of the pronghorn antelope, we conducted an 

 extensive state-of-the-art radio telemetry project to determine 

 home ranges, seasonal use, migration, and critical use areas. 

 The information is now loaded into a Geographic Information 

 System (CIS) and we now have established a antelope habitat model 

 that can be used reservation-wide to determine suitable locations 

 for additional antelope transplants. So you can see that we are 

 serious in our attempts to provide effective and efficient 

 management of our wildlife resources. But our efforts do not 

 stop at big game management. 



It has long been our wish here on our reservation to establish a 

 permanent water-based recreation facility that would satisfy our 

 needs in sport fishing. Although we do have repairs pending on 

 several reservoirs (Paguate Ponds and Seama) with completion 

 scheduled soon, they will be used primarily for irrigation and 

 consequently, sport fishing and other water-based activities will 

 not be available. It would be in our best interest to have a 

 large reservoir built strictly for water-based recreation 



