Thank you very much. My name is Duncan Crawford. I'm the president of the Prince Edward Island Wildlife Federation. I'm also on the board of the Canadian Wildlife Federation as a director at large, the P.E.I. Trappers Association, and I am the founder and president of the P.E.I. Archery Association. They are all intertwined. Given we're such a small province, it's not uncommon for people such as myself to be on multiple groups, committees, and boards.
Unfortunately, I never got to hear any of the previous presenters in terms of the information they are putting forth, but what I can do is give a quick rundown of the numbers for P.E.I., and it's a trend that is basically the same right across Canada.
If we look at the numbers of hunters, fishers, and trappers participating in this activity over the course of 30 years, we're down considerably. More recently, at least in the last five years, we're seeing steady and consistent gains. As Mr. Farrant just said, a lot of those gains are coming from youth and ladies in the sport.
As of last year, we had roughly 8,132 people contribute to the wildlife conservation fund. You have to buy this whether you hunt, fish, or trap, so it's a good basket to catch everybody in at least once, because we have a lot of duplication in other licence sales in that a number of people that hunt and trap also fish. We don't want to be counting twice. The WCF only collects once. Given the population of P.E.I., that gives you a pretty good percentage of the participation of people who hunt, fish, and trap relative to the total population.
That breaks down to roughly 7,000 angling licences sold last year. The trapping number is about 151 and the licensed hunter...or the hunting licences sold are just over $2,400. It's a little difficult to get perfect numbers because we do complimentary licences for overage, or seniors, and also for youth. Some of those things have been great vehicles to either keep or get new people into this group of activities or sports.
We have a very active volunteer organization. We collaborate with Delta Waterfowl, Ducks Unlimited, and the forests, fish and wildlife division to put on the hunter's safety practical component. Last year we had almost 130 kids participate. We hire a bus company to transport kids from as far as three hours away in the western end of the province, and an hour away in the east, and we all descend upon the Charlottetown Trap and Skeet Club, which is about 15 minutes outside of our capital city.
They get to do their hunter exams online, and then the practical component is coming out to the Charlottetown Trap and Skeet club where the various conservation organizations, or troop, or clubs, etc., all get together. We break the kids up into modules and that counts as their practical component.
After that, each kid gets a temporary hunter safety.... If they don't have a parent or someone to take them, we pair them up with mentors. We have a lot of volunteers that mentor within P.E.I., and that gets young people out.
We're becoming an outdoor women workshop on a regular basis: east, west, and central. That's given us great gains in the interest of ladies in the sport.
As another consistent trend across Canada, we introduced the National Archery in the Schools Program three years ago, as OFAH did last year. We're seeing tremendous gains there. A lot of people get interested, and then they start asking questions about complementary activities like hunting, fishing, and trapping. It's a good vehicle if nothing else to broach the subject with young people.
We're seeing in the last couple of years about a 1.3% overall growth and just over 3% new hunter safeties any given year. A good percentage of those, probably 20% to 30%, are females. In our youth group at least one in three of the new kids coming in is female and that bodes well for the sports of hunting, fishing, and trapping in the future.
That's all I have to say. I welcome any questions.