Spending some time around the internet while getting my morning shot of caffeine and happened to stumble across an interesting post over at DailyKos. The post is an open letter to the President-elect about making the right choice in selecting the new Secretary of the Interior - what caught my attention, however, were links to a couple of 2006 studies by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on "wildlife-associated recreation", one on total participation and the other on wildlife watching economics (PDF files).
As a rule, I am not opposed to hunting (or gun ownership), though I do find "trophy hunting" abhorrent (totally ego driven). Facts are, organizations like Ducks Unlimited have made major contributions to improving our National Wildlife Refuges, as has the Duck Stamp program; for that I am grateful and don't mind sharing refuges with hunters for a few months out of the year. But wildlife watchers outnumber the hunters and fishers out there significantly and I sometimes think our collective voices aren't always being heard.
For starters:
Total Wildlife-Related Recreation
Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87.5 million
Expenditures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $122.3 billionSportspersons
Total participants* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33.9 million
Anglers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30.0 million
Hunters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.5 millionTotal expenditures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $76.7 billion
Fishing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42.0 billion
Hunting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.9 billion
Unspecified . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.7 billionWildlife Watchers
Total participants** . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71.1 million
Around the home . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67.8 million
Away from home . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23.0 million
Total expenditures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $45.7 billion* 8.5 million both fished and hunted.
** 19.7 million both wildlife watched around the home and away
from home.
Collectively, fishing and hunting generate more dollars than wildlife watching, but it is important to note that those numbers are shrinking while wildlife watching numbers are growing: Wildlife watching participation increased by 5 million from 2001 to 2006 and expenditures increased by $2 billion. During the same period the number of fishers (~4 million or 7%) and hunters (>0.5 million or 2%) underwent significant declines in participation. While fishing expenditures were up during the same period, hunting expenditures were down. Over the 10 year period 1996-2006, wildlife watching expenditures were up $8 billion, while fishing and hunting expenditures were down $6.6 billion and $3.6 billion, respectively.
Also interesting is looking at gender related facts: For wildlife watching, the numbers and percentages are broken down into watching wildlife "at home" or "away from home". "At home" wildlife watching is split 54% female and 46% male and "away from home" is split 49% female and 51% male. Fishing participation, on the other hand, is 25% female and 75% male, while hunting is 9% female and 91% male. Now, I don't start any gender wars here (smile), but one could infer from these statistics that wildlife watching is better for couples (assuming couples are watching wildlife together, of course).
One set of numbers that took me somewhat by surprise, at least regarding fishing and hunting, was ethnicity. I knew that wildlife watching participation is overwhelmingly white (93% according to the report) and, in fact, I'm currently reading a book - Birding for Everyone by John C. Robinson - on this very subject (that I will be reviewing here soon). But I was really quite surprised to see similar percentages for fishing (92%) and hunting (96%). Hmmm . . . .
Another statistic shows that, of the 71 million wildlife watchers, nearly 19 million are photographing wildlife - meaning photographers outnumber hunters by 6 million (no wonder I can't sell enough #$!&@ photographs!).
Some other fun facts about wildlife watching:
Roughly one out of three Americans 16 years of age and older, or 71 million, participated in wildlife watching in 2006.The 71 million wildlife-watching participants is more than four times greater than the attendance of all National League Football teams during the 2006 season.
Wildlife-related expenditures in 2006 were $45.7 billion.
Expenditures on wildlife watching are equivalent to the amount of revenue from all spectator sports (football, baseball, and other sports), all amusement parks and arcades, casinos (except casino hotels), bowling centers, and skiing facilities.
(Wildlife watching) Expenditures rippled through the economy generating $122.6 billion in total industry output and 1,063,482 jobs.
All in all, it appears we wildlife watchers are a FORCE to be reckoned with!
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