Today's Strategy, Tommorow's Wildlife January 1983 Third Edition

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aside for wildlife and for over a million license buyers is less than four - tenths of one percent of the land area of Colorado. By law, the Division of Wildlife and the Divi- sion of Parks and Outdoor Recreation make yearly payments to the counties for the "impact" of our owning land for the sportsmen and park users. No other State agencies pay counties for their losses of revenues caused by governmental ownership of lands. While human activities on both private and public lands affect wildlife, the Division coop- erates with other State and federal agencies, with sportsmen's organizations and with private landowners in many programs to improve wild- life habitat and to mitigate losses of habitat. Among these efforts are range restoration proj- ects, special warning signs and fences to reduce losses of wildlife on highways, cooperative studies with energy development companies, wetlands development, stream improvement and land and water acquisition — mostly through leases and easements. In each case the first pri- ority is to maintain and improve wildlife habitat. THE WILDLIFE RESOURCE Colorado is home to approximately 960 species of wildlife. Sport game has 113 members in this group and sport fish, and aquatic wildlife 100. Thus 747 species are nongame. WILDLIFE USES AND BENEFITS People purchased a total of 1,260,365 licenses of all kinds in 1981. Visitors to Colorado bought 360,432 licenses and residents bought 899,933. In addition to those persons who purchased licenses, an equal number or more participate in nonconsumptive uses of wildlife, such as wildlife observation and photography. The sheer size of these numbers tells us that the enjoyment of wildlife is a big part of people pleasure in Colorado. ECONOMIC BENEFITS License sales brought in a total net of $23,150,643 in 1981. Residents put up $8,369,185 of this amount and nonresidents chipped in with $14,781,458. Hunting licenses were over 75 percent of the total, fishing 24 percent and trapping 1 percent. The Economics Department of Colorado State University did a study of expenditures by sports- men in 1981. The study shows that sportsmen spent $1.040 billion in their pursuit of wildlife. If we apply an average multiplier, or reuse of money, of 2.5 to this expenditure of more than $1 billion, we see that wildlife generated nearly $2.6 billion in economic activity for Colorado in 1981. This expenditure and the economic benefits are more than three times what they were in 1973, only eight years before. Expenditures for fishing topped the list, accounting for 65 percent of all spending by resi- dents. Nineteen percent of all nonresident expen- ditures came from out -of -state fishermen. Elk hunting, deer hunting and small game hunting, in that order, followed fishing in total revenues from resident and nonresident sports- men. The geographic distribution of hunting and fishing expenditures for 1981 was determined for each of the 13 geographic planning regions in the State. Results show that the largest expendi- tures, about 47 percent, were made in the Denver metropolitan area (Region 3). The second largest amount, 11 percent, was spent in the Colorado Springs area (Region 4). This is followed by Region 12, Middle Park -North Park - Steamboat Springs -Aspen -Eagle and regions 10, 2 and 11 with population centers in Gunnison- Delta- Montrose, Fort Collins - Greeley, and Grand Junc- tion- Glenwood Springs- Meeker - Craig, respect- ively, each generated between six and eight per- cent of the total statewide expenditures. RECENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS As a "Report to Our Stockholders," here are some of the successes achieved by the Division of Wild- life in recent years: GENERAL, The Division has ... 1. ... pioneered the principle of mitigation, where those who destroy or weaken wildlife