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DENTRY: Numbers of anglers, hunters decreasing

By Ed Dentry, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published November 15, 2007 at 1:36 a.m.

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The number of fishermen in the state has been declining.

Photo by Ed Dentry © The Rocky

The number of fishermen in the state has been declining.

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The numbers themselves are discouraging enough, until you account for outlandish population growth.

Then they become shocking. Americans - including Rocky Mountain Americans - are turning away from the hook and bullet faster than you can say iPod.

Nationally, there has been a 12 percent decline in anglers since 2001. The drop for hunters was only 4 percent, but it was a whopping 15 percent in the Rocky Mountain region.

Those are some tallies charted in the latest five-year report just released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: "2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation."

In 15 years, the number of fishermen has fallen from 36.6 million to 30 million nationally. Hunter numbers have dipped from 14 million to 12.5 million.

That's still more hunters and anglers than the first survey counted, in 1955. Back then, the FWS found 11.7 million hunters and 20.1 million anglers.

But there are a lot more people now. And gains sportsmen made in the 1970s and '80s are history. Hunters and anglers represent a small and ever- shrinking fraction of America's increasingly urbanized whole.

Fifteen years ago, 19 percent of the U.S. population fished, not 13 percent (2006). Seven percent of the population hunted, not 5 percent (2006).

In the Rocky Mountain states, the absolute number of anglers has stayed roughly the same for a decade, a little more than 2 million. But fishermen went from 16 percent of the population to 13 percent in just the last five years.

The number of hunters in the Rocky Mountain states slipped from 1 million in 2001 to 868,000, according to the current survey.

Hunters as a percentage of the population in the Rocky Mountain states dropped from 11 percent 15 years ago to 8 percent in 2001 to 6 percent now.

What's going on? Growth, urbanization, development, not to mention drought, fires and water shortages of the past five years. The FWS doesn't speculate. It just rolls out the numbers.

Colorado shares in these sorry fortunes, and that should bother everyone.

As the number of hunters and anglers go, so goes funding for all the state's wildlife programs - from watchable wildlife to habitat protection and preservation of native species.

Colorado hunting

* There were 265,000 hunters in Colorado in 2006. That's a 6 percent drop from 281,000 hunters in 2001.

* Only 4 percent of Coloradans 16 years old or older, or about 138,000 residents, hunted in 2006.

* Big-game hunting is tops. Big-game hunters comprised 80 percent of all hunters small-game hunters, 22 percent migratory bird hunters, 17 percent.

* Nonresident hunters outnumbered residents 51 percent to 49 percent in the recent survey. In 2001, residents led nonresidents 57 percent to 43 percent.

* Hunters spent $448 million in Colorado in 2006.

Colorado fishing

* Sixteen percent of state residents 16 or older, or about 571,000 people, fished in 2006.

* There were 677,000 anglers in Colorado in 2006, including visitors from other states. Residents comprised 74 percent of all fishermen in the state.

* The previous survey, in 2001, found 915,000 anglers. Of those, 626,000 were residents.

* Fishermen spent $582 million in Colorado in 2006.

Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Comments

  • December 14, 2007

    12:51 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    Classof80 writes:

    As you find that those who are regualr hunters they just can't afford to go like they use to. Then you take all these land grabbers that trade the Forest Service land that's not worth a crap and develop the good land. The elk figure out that its their refuge and of course no hunting is allowed. If those same folks do allow hunting its at a high price and for those who look like Cabela Poster children. Sooner of later they will have ruined hunting in this state for good.