Reprinted from my April 23, 2006 column in the Morgantown Dominion Post
Mark Duda was an undergraduate in our fish and wildlife program while I was on the faculty at West Virginia University. He went on to get his Master’s Degree and then formed his own company, Responsive Management. That company is the tops in the country when it comes to doing surveys on fish and wildlife. Mark has literally conducted important surveys for every state fish and wildlife agency in the country.
From time to time Mark sends me newsletters outlining the work that Responsive Management is doing, so I thought I’d run through some of his latest findings, to see just how American citizens feel about fish and wildlife.
For example, Mark found that homes that have children are more likely to have a member go fishing than homes without children. Sixty-six percent of homes with children had someone go fishing in the past 5 years compared to 51% of homes with no children.
In New York and New Hampshire the top species anglers go for are bass (large and small mouth) and several trout species. In general though, bass fishing is becoming more popular while trout fishing is decreasing in popularity. Might have something to do with decreasing water quality.
There is also a change in why we fish. Fishing for food, fishing to catch big fish, and fishing for recreation are all declining, while being close to nature, relaxation and to be with friends and family are all increasing. In South Carolina 53% of anglers release most of the fish they catch, while 29% keep most and 18% keep or release about equally. Now here is a big change over what we saw 20 years ago. Eleven percent of active anglers participated in a fishing tournament in the past 12 months. Whoa. That one surprised me.
The average South Carolina fisherman spends $16-$30 on a fishing trip, but 24% spend up to $99 and 22% spend over $100 per trip. In Georgia 20% of residents went freshwater fishing in the past year and 6% went saltwater fishing. Lots of people obviously love to fish in Georgia.
Mark also conducted a major study on the Nation’s youth and hunting and fishing. Eighty-six percent of youth aged 8-18 approve of fishing and 85% want to go fishing. In fact, 50% of those 85% really want to go fishing. Seventy-five percent want to go fishing more than they currently do and 77% believe that their friends think it is "really cool" to go fishing. My guess is that this statistic holds for West Virginia as well, so take your kids and their friends fishing. They love it.
Marks studies show that many forms of outdoor recreation are on the decline. Wildlife viewing dropped 13% from 1991-2001 and continues to drop. Interestingly wildlife viewers support hunting. We need those guys on our side. Hunting also continues to slide. For example, in Pennsylvania hunting license sales were 1,274,763 in 1980 and dropped to 1,017,802 in 2003. Some would say not to worry, because you still have over 1 million hunters in Pennsylvania. However, when you lose 1/4 million hunters every 20 years you are in trouble.
In addition, in Pennsylvania and many other states, there may be an additional major drop in hunters in the next ten years. The reason is that there is a large cohort of older hunters in the 60-65 year range, and we’ll lose those all about the same time (plus or minus 5 years). I’m in that group. Lots of us are in that age group. Duda noted that the Pennsylvania hunter population is aging and "personal health/age" was the top reason respondents did not plan to hunt in the future. And when we die or get too disabled to hunt, a big drop in hunter numbers will occur in a short period of time. Clearly we need more young hunters to replace older hunters.
Duda points out that hunter retention is one thing, but from the above, you can see that keeping older hunters hunting is a dead end situation. Hunter recruitment is needed, much more so than hunter retention.
We’ve got a ton of boaters in this area. A study Duda did in Georgia looked at boaters and found that 82% of Georgia boaters thought it was safe, while 10% thought it was dangerous. The greatest concern was reckless operation of boats, intoxicated boaters, and speeding boaters.
Could that be Cheat Lake on a sunny Sunday?
Americans love to get into the woods. Forty-nine percent visit state parks, 47% take trips to see wildlife, 46% view wildlife around the home, 30% fish, 30% boat, 20% camp, and 6% hunt. But the public has low levels of knowledge about wildlife. In Florida only 14% of the residents could name an endangered species in Florida other than mountain lions and manatees. Name three in West Virginia.
For the country, less than 5% could identify "excise taxes on hunting and fishing equipment" as a source of funding for fish and wildlife management.
Though most people are satisfied with the job done by our state wildlife agencies, in the Northeast, most folks can’t name the agency responsible for fish and wildlife management. Only 16% of residents could name their state agency responsible for managing fish and wildlife. Can you name ours?
