Thursday, April 16, 2020

Ohio's fishing license revenues likely feeling the pain caused by COVID-19

With a suspected coronavrus (COVID-19) drop in Ohio fishing license sales, it only stands to reason the Ohio Division of Wildlife’s Wildlife Fund is also coughing and wheezing.

However, the income derived from the sale of turkey-hunting permits is actually robust and healthy. For now anyway, and what happens when the ban on sales of non-resident turkey tags continues is an economist’s headache.

As found in a previous posting, the as-of April 13th issuance of all Ohio fishing licenses totaled 161,975 documents. This figure represents a 32-percent decline for the same 2019 to-date tally of 238,172 documents.

The net result is a to-date total drop of income derived by the sale of all fishing licenses of $567,335; from $5,327,310 to-date in 2019 to $4,759,975 to-date this year and as of April 13. That is a drop of a little more than 10 percent.

All of the single-day and multi-day fishing license sales were down as were nearly all of the multi-year fishing licenses available to resident anglers.

And here with the multi-day license sales revenue declines likely can be attributed to Governor Mike DeWine’s order to cease the sale of all licenses and permits to non-residents during the COVID-19 crisis.

Among the examples is the three-day license sales. Here the state made $40, 230 to-date in 2019 but only $14,688 to-date this year. Likewise, the sale of one-day Lake Erie charter licenses saw to-date revenues decline from $3,350 in 2019 to just $923 this year.

Looking at the sale of annual non-resident fishing licenses and one sees that to-date in 2019 the Wildlife Division saw $485,492 go into the Wildlife Fund. To-date this year and that figure has slipped to $275,380, a revenue decline of $210,112.

For the all-important resident annual a drop was also encountered. The 2019 to-day revenue generated by this category was $3,720,402. To-date this year that figure stands at $3,112,008; or an income drop of $608,394.

A glimmer of gold is being seen – again, for the moment – with the sale of spring turkey tags. In all there are six spring turkey tag classifications but only five of them generate funds. The exception belongs to the issuance of free spring turkey tags to disabled veterans.

However, combining the five categories and the Wildlife Fund has to-date collected $45,841 more dollars; up from the $406,459 collected to-date in 2019 to $452,300 to-date this year.

The revenue of to-date resident (adult) spring turkey tags rose from $298,632 to-date in 2019 to $365,490 to-date this year. This jump represents an increase of $66,858.

Yet noteworthy as a revenue slippage was both the to-date sales of youth spring turkey tags as well as those sold to senior citizens.

For youths, to-date in 2019 the Wildlife Fund collected $62,403. But for the to-date sale of these youth licenses this year the figure was only $29,025, a drop of $33,378 or about 53 percent.

The revenue percentage plummet was equally severe for the sale of senior citizen spring turkey hunting licenses. The to-date 2019 revenue figure or this category was $18,964 while the comparable 2020 to-date figure was $9,130, or a drop of about 48 percent.

Still, while the sale of non-resident annual fishing licenses and the short-term day licenses – more often than not believed to go to out-of-staters – revenue from the sale of non-resident spring turkey tags was actually up. And considerably so, too.

The to-date 2019 revenue figure for non-residents was $26,480, but the revenue generated to-date this year for the sale of non-resident turkey tags is $48,655. That is a whopping jump of $22,175.

It must be remembered, though, that while those non-resident turkey hunters who have all ready bought a spring tag can use them, no additional non-residents may purchase such a spring wild turkey license through the remainder of DeWine’s order.

Multiple factors could all be impacting license sales, says Brian Banbury, the Wildlife Division’s Executive Administrator For Information and Education.

And the potential mitigating reasons are the influences of the weather, a change to multi-year licenses, “and possibly the current health situation,” Banbury says.

We will not understand the full picture until later this year,” Banbury said.


- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net
JFrischk4@gmail.com

No comments:

Post a Comment