The South Dakota Game Fish and Parks Department is paying Florida firm Southwick Associates $40,000 to study the economic impact of hunting, fishing, and state parks:
The federal survey is conducted every five years by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and is used by many states to estimate how much economic impact hunting and fishing has on the country and individual states. The last national survey was released in 2011 and estimated that 90.1 million people spent $144.7 billion on hunting, fishing or wildlife watching nationally.
In South Dakota 662,000 people spent $967 million on those activities, that survey found.
Those numbers have been used as basis to estimate annual participation and spending in the state since they were published. The problem is the survey didn’t include enough people from many states to get a truly reliable estimate of participation and spending [Nick Lowery, “GFP to Take Closer Look at Outdoor Economics,” Pierre Capital Journal, 2015.12.31].
Now I’m all for data-based policy. But will we really learn anything new?
About 10 years ago the Alaska Game and Fish Department’s sport fish division conducted a similar survey, said SD GFP Secretary Kelly Hepler. At the time, he was working for Alaska Game and Fish.
Hepler said the state’s survey turned up similar results to the federal survey. But the state survey gave sport fish managers more specific economic data to present to lawmakers when the time came. He said that is a goal for the new South Dakota survey too.
“I think it needs to be part of our story,” Hepler said of the state survey [Lowery, 2015.12.31].
The federal data wasn’t off for Alaska. We may just be belt-and-suspendering the South Dakota data. But given that the state already gears so much of its tourism advertising toward GF&P activities, it seems surprising that GF&P has to sell itself any harder to lawmakers.
Nonetheless, GF&P says Southwick Associates will produce their data by this summer. I look forward to the publication of these updated outdoors economics numbers.