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| The rewards of fisheries conservation are both intrinsic and material. The economic output related to the conservation successes of the Fisheries Program is responsible for 68,000 jobs in a variety of industries. Craig Springer photo |
For the last 500 years, scribes have waxed poetic about the virtues and vices of fishing. Some lament the challenges and others applaud the rewards of the quiet sport. The apostle Izzak Walton wrote in his book The Compleat Angler in 1653 that fishing “will prove to be a virtue, a reward unto itself.” Fishing and conservation have inherent and intrinsic values, and they own other values that are very measurable.
Two U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service economists, Joseph Charbonneau, Ph.D., and James Caudill, Ph.D., recently made such measurements. They assessed the economic contributions made by the work performed in the Fisheries Program, nationwide, from 2004 to 2008. The numbers they reported in their peer-reviewed work were adjusted to the value of a dollar in late 2010. The numbers are stunning, and would make any mutual fund manager blush.
Results from the entire Fisheries Program and its 154 field stations account for a total economic output of $3.6 billion, coming from an investment of $128 million. In the National Fish Hatchery System, 123 million stocked fish yielded 13 million angler-days in turn spurring $554 million in retail sales, $256 million in wages of jobs created, where $37 million was returned to the federal treasury in income tax. Another $34 million was generated in state income taxes.
Better habitat means better fishing. Toward that end, the Fisheries Program has restored thousands of acres and miles of streams for the betterment of fish, and it is good for people. The economists calculate that habitat conservation has a value of $2 billion. Money changing hands means jobs. All told, the economic output related to the conservation successes of the Fisheries Program is responsible for 68,000 jobs in a variety of industries.
Five hundred years of fishing literature may have laid threadbare any questions on the value of fishing. But one thing is clear, conservation is important to the economy, and you can take that to the bank.
