Economic benefits of publicly accessible land for ruffed grouse hunters

Abstract

Although numerous studies have focused on estimating economic benefits associated with big game hunting experiences, economic valuation efforts examining small game hunting have largely been neglected. This is especially surprising with respect to hunting grouse, a family of widely distributed upland game birds targeted by about 800,000 hunters in 2011. Furthermore, despite efforts by federal and state agencies directed at improving and increasing public land for recreational hunting purposes, a dearth of studies exist regarding the economic benefits of public land to hunters. Using the travel cost method and data from a 2008 survey of Michigan ruffed grouse hunters, we examine relationships between hunting site choice and publicly accessible hunting land. We find that federally owned land, state-owned land, and publicly accessible, privately owned Commercial Forest Act (CFA) land are positive predictors of hunter site selection (P < 0.001). Given this relationship, we then estimated the economic benefits of different types of publicly accessible land to ruffed grouse hunters by examining the willingness of hunters to incur increasing travel costs to hunt in counties with greater amounts of publicly accessible land. We estimated the economic benefits of publicly accessible hunting land for ruffed grouse hunters in Michigan to be over $20 million in 2008, with economic benefits of CFA land comprising about $6.9 million of this annual total. Estimating the economic benefits of publicly accessible hunting land for outdoor recreationists provides a useful metric for policy makers to use in evaluating how changes in the amount and nature of publicly accessible hunting land affects these individuals. Ó 2013 The Wildlife Society.

Incorporating human dimensions objectives into waterfowl habitat planning and delivery

“…The negative influence of public land abundance on number of trips in New York was unexpected and we note the small effect size (Table ). Publicly accessible land has generally been found to be a positive determinant of hunter site selection (e.g., deer hunters [Knoche and Lupi ], grouse hunters [Knoche and Lupi ], and pheasant hunters (Knoche et al )]. Previous research with waterfowl hunters has shown that hunters are willing to pay significantly for increased public access (Crookshank ) and loss of habitat can have a significant negative effect on money spent participating in waterfowl hunting (Miller and Hay ).…”

“…Discrete choice modeling is an analytical field that explains and predicts the selection of one alternative from a set of mutually exclusive alternatives, such as purchasing a car or selecting a site for outdoor recreation. With respect to wildlife‐based outdoor recreation, big game (Boxall ; Schwabe et al ; Knoche and Lupi , ) and upland game‐bird hunting (Adams et al , Remington et al , Knoche and Lupi , Knoche et al ) have been the focus of most discrete choice modeling efforts. Discrete choice modeling offers a promising framework for explaining and predicting recreation participation and site choice for wetland bird enthusiasts, providing results that can inform where, how much, and what kind of land management is needed to achieve the human dimensions objectives of the NAWMP; once obtained, this information can be evaluated concurrently with estimates of how much, where, and what kind of land management is needed to achieve the biological objectives of the NAWMP.…”

An Empirical Analysis of Hunting Lease Pricing and Value of Game in Sweden

“…The revealed preference approach infers economic values of an activity based on observed behavior of economic agents in an actual market. The travel cost and hedonic price methods are the two most applied revealed preference methods for the valuation of game species (Livengood,1983;Knoche andLupi, 2012, 2013). These revealed preference approaches measure use values, i.e., values associated with active utilization of the resource such as meat value and recreational value of hunting.…”

Transforming Abandoned Farm Fields to Conifer Plantations Reduces Ruffed Grouse Density

“…Ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus; hereafter grouse), one of the most popular small game birds in eastern North America (Bourret et al 1991;Knoche and Lupi 2013), occurs mainly in second-growth deciduous and mixed forests (Rusch et al 2000;Dessecker and McAuley 2001). These shrub-dominated and young forests are characterized by high stem densities.…”