Demand for Wildlife Hunting in British Columbia

We present estimates of the demand for hunting licenses by residents and non residents in British Columbia for the period 1971–2000. We obtain estimates of both short-run and long- run price elasticities and discuss their revenue implications for future fee increases. We find the demand by non residents to be strongly correlated with U.S. income variation over the business cycle, but find no such role for cyclical income variation for resident hunters. The ability of the government to increase revenues from resident hunters turns out to be limited, particularly in the long run, while greater opportunities exist to raise revenues from U.S. hunters as short- and long-run price elasticities of demand are quite inelastic. We argue that conservation surcharges on foreign hunters are one way to capture more of the resource rent.