The Effects of Regional Population Growth on Hunting for Selected Big Game Species in Southcentral Alaska 1976-2000

Abstract

This report represents an initial attempt to incorporate available hunting and fishing harvest data gathered by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game into a comprehensive framework employing econometric modeling to forecast future hunting pressure on the state's game resources. This project was fraught with difficulties at every turn, not the least of which was retrieving and formatting the hunting data in a form which could be employed for our modeling experiments. Consequently, the project could not have taken place at all without the ready cooperation of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, who generously made staff time available to us, and Mr. Ed Murphy of the University of Alaska Institute of Arctic Biology, who supplied and ran the programs which made SPSS access to the hunting data possible. The population projections were made by Tom Lane, with the aid of Mike Scott, while the hunting data manipulation, species habitat, and the hunting effort programming and projections were handled by Bob Childers and Bill Alves. Typing was done by Darla Siver and Marge Matlock. We believe this study to be a useful first attempt to forecast hunting demand in Alaska for long-range planning purposes. As funding becomes available, the Institute plans future research in this critical quality-of-life aspect of a rapidly growing state.