Much outdoor recreation occurs on publicly owned land and water resources, or involves use of these public resources. Consequently, an economic problem arises concerning the value of recreational resources which do not have a conventional market price. Without a price to guide the allocation of resources, it is difficult to obtain optimal decisions in allocation of these publicly owned natural resources among alternative uses, including recreation, timber, and domestic livestock production. In Oregon, the big game resource has a great impact on the economy of the state. Positive values of this resource are related to recreational use and to income generated which benefit local economies. Negative values of big game include its competition for resources used for timber production and/or livestock grazing. In order to better assess the value of the big game resource, an attempt has been made in this thesis to improve demand models from which the net economic value of the Oregon big game resource can be derived. The data used in this study were obtained from the questionnaires mailed to a random sample of Oregon big game hunters during the fall of 1968. The travel cost method was used to estimate the demand for big game hunting, based on the actual behavior of the hunters. Several algebraic forms of the travel cost demand equation were estimated for the Northeast and the Central regions of Oregon. The concept of consumers' surplus was used to estimate the net economic value for the Oregon big game resources. Net economic value for the Northeast and Central regions of Oregon in 1968 dollars was approximately $14.3 million, based on the exponential demand function. Net economic value for the same two regions was approximately $11 million, based on the linear demand function. An attempt was made in this study to predict the changes in consumers' surplus from changes in the number of deer and elk harvested. Note that the regression models in this thesis implied that a ten percent increase in harvest would increase the consumers' surplus of hunters by more than ten percent. However, the hypothesis that a ten percent increase in harvest would increase consumers' surplus by exactly ten percent was not rejected by a statistical test. Therefore, a good deal more research is needed to determine the value of marginal changes in the number of deer and elk harvested. It is thought that the estimation of net economic value in this study for the Northeast and Central regions of Oregon will be useful from the viewpoint of big game management and resource allocation in Oregon. / Graduation date: 1981

There is an increasing recognition that conservation projects need to provide tangible benefits to the communities involved in them. In Africa a common method of providing economic benefits to communities is to sell the right to hunt wildlife in conservation areas. The Makasa Nature Reserve is a joint project between a conservation body and a community. The reserve is a conservation project that aims to provide economic benefits to the community involved. There are a number of possible income generating strategies for the Makasa Nature Reserve. This study is an examination of the revenue that the reserve could generate from game hunting. There are a number of wildlife species on the reserve that can be hunted but buffalo are the most attractive to hunters and the most lucrative for the reserve. In order to determine the number of buffalo that can be harvested a two-stage approach was used. Firstly, a deterministic mathematical model of the buffalo population was developed in the study. This model was used to establish age structures of the buffalo population which will maximise a given objective function. An age structure that has a harvest level that will maximise the revenue of the reserve was selected as being the most appropriate for the buffalo population at Makasa. In the second stage a stochastic model of the buffalo population was developed which incorporated environmental and demographic stochasticity. A management policy for the buffalo population, which was based on the age structure that maximises revenue, was developed. The stochastic model was used to aid the development of the management policy and to determine the average harvesting rate of buffalo from the Makasa reserve. Using the information gathered on the harvesting rate of buffalo and combining it with the likely harvesting rate of other species from the reserve, it is possible to get a broad picture of the likely economic potential of game hunting on the Makasa Nature Reserve. This approach of determining the offtake of the economically dominant species in the reserve and then combining this information with the likely offtake of other species in the reserve can be generalised and applied to similar reserves. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1997.

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