Many groups of Illinois citizens interested in conservation, agriculture, and civic 
affairs have questioned the wisdom of spending huge public sums to maintain agriculture in river 
bottomlands, For years, conservation groups have pointed to the recreational value of these 
lands in the natural state, And, although there has been a general awareness of the money 
brought into river towns by commercial fishermen, trappers, duck hunters, and sport fisher- 
men, there have been, unfortunately, few if any figures readily available to support the popular 
impressions of the amounts of money involved, 
To provide sorely needed information on the matter, we have compiled figures on the 
harvest of commercial fish, sport fish, ducks, and fur per acre of bottomland area; the money 
received from the sale of commercial fish and fur; and the money spent by sportsmen to take a 
unit of fish or waterfowl, Many of these figures were obtained from two United States Fish and 
Wildlife Service refuges in Illinois -- Spring Lake, near Savanna, and Lake Chautauqua, near 
Havana -- both of which had once been drained and then restored, 
METHOD OF ASSESSING VALUES 
Each area of wild land or water used by man has multiple values, If private, it has 
tangible values to the owner and also to the public with which the owner does business, Also, it 
has intangible values to the owner and, where used by other persons, to the public, 
Tangible values to the owner can be measured by the annual income from the harvest 
of commercial products -- fish, fur, timber -- and the selling of hunting and fishing privileges, 
But how can tangible values to the public, or intangible values to either owner or public, be 
measured? 
Public Values:--It is the desire for recreation, not food, that draws multitudes of an- 
glers to streams, ponds, and lakes, and hunters to marshes, fields, and woodlands, Because of 
their interest in hunting and fishing, sportsmen spend millions of dollars each year for equipment, 
transportation, guides, special facilities, lodging, and many other sundries, The production and 
distribution of the equipment and the provision of facilities used in hunting and fishing bring em- 
ployment to many thousands of workers, 
The dollar is the criterion we recognize best and have used to determine the economic 
importance to the public of baseball, football, skiing, tennis, golf, and other sports, It is reason- 
able to determine the tangible value tothe public of hunting or fishing on a similar basis--by cal- 
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