Thanks. That's a good question. Certainly something that came out very strongly in our report was that when we looked at trends in participation and recreational fishing in Yukon, we did begin to see a slight decline in some categories. Overall, I'd categorize it as relatively stable right now, but the indicators are there such that we believe in the next 10 to 20 years, we're going to have a reduction in the number of people who participate in the recreational fishery.
I'm not an economist and I can't speak definitively to those numbers, but my biologist assessment is that we're going to see a reduction in expenditures that will be concomitant with the reduction in angler activity, which is concerning. Also, from a fisheries and management perspective, there's a big concern about reduction in angler participation because of some of the non-economic values that those provide. So what I'm talking about here are people who are out on the land who are engaging with fishing and with those species tend to have a lot of interest in maintaining those populations and in maintaining healthy ecosystems. When you start to see fewer people engaging in that activity, I personally get worried that you're not going to have as much advocacy for those important resources as we did in the past. That's really concerning for me as a fisheries manager.
You know what? I talked to colleagues across the country and these are trends that everyone is seeing. This is not a Yukon phenomenon. This is a national, maybe a worldwide phenomenon, where there's less uptake in angling by youth. The average age of an angler is increasing and increasing at quite a rapid rate in Yukon.
Dealing with this is a lot of programming, a lot of education, a lot of trying to encourage youth to get out and participate in angling. I think we're just scratching the surface now in terms of what those programs will be. But as I say, it's not necessarily just a Yukon phenomenon. I think every jurisdiction across the country is dealing with this same issue.