A Statistical Powerhouse?

[Outdoor Talk Network by Jim Slinsky]
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A Statistical Powerhouse? ©

By Jim Slinsky
02/04/08

On December 27, 2007 the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a column about our elk program and the PA Wilds that simply must be dissected and discussed. I’ve seen “pie in the sky” hyped-up columns about government programs before, but this one takes the cake. Frankly, it reads like a DCNR press release. Such glowing accolades and impressive numbers I have not seen located in one column about one program in a long, long time.

However, if you read slowly and think about the stated numbers your eyes instinctively begin to squint. As you traverse the column it becomes apparent that this is PA Wilds advertisement disguised as a news article. The numbers are literally provocative and one can not stop from thinking “I need to see some proof”.

The first number that jumps out at you is the $75 million figure that represents our citizen’s investment in this program to get it off the ground. That one is a believable number and it actually might be low. It wasn’t a week or so ago that newspapers were printing stories across the state about the battle in Harrisburg to further fund our libraries. At issue was less than $100,000.

The next number that floored me was the projection of 4 million yearly visitors to this twelve county area we call the PA Wilds. This must have been a typo because that would be almost three times the population of Philadelphia. It would more than double the amount of people who visit Gettysburg National Park every year. It would exceed the record of 3.1 million visitors in one year to Yellowstone National Park by almost one million.

The next incredulous number I noticed was the economic impact of $8.5 million in the last three years in the town of Ridgway, alone. I have been to Ridgway a number of times and there must be an underground city because I can’t quite put my finger on that $8.5 million dollars above ground.

I believe you are getting my point. This PA Wilds program is a statistic powerhouse in someone’s imagination, but not in the real world. I still have the Penn State study of a few years ago pinning tourism impact at $1.2 million generated by fifty to sixty thousand visitors per year. That may be up slightly, but a $75 million dollar investment of our citizens’ hard-earned money? This is a travesty.

After eight years or so, isn’t it time for DCNR to produce some hard evidence of this fantastic program that can just bury visitor records at the number one national park in America, Yellowstone. Isn’t it time to ask for the names and phone numbers of every start-up business that DCNR attributes to this “statistical powerhouse” they call the PA Wilds? Shouldn’t DCNR also produce a list of every business that has failed in the area, since there is no longer a deer herd in northcentral? Shouldn’t we demand two lists, start-ups and close-downs, to compare what is really happening in the northcentral? I’m hearing Renovo is quickly becoming a ghost town, Emporium has fifteen vacant store fronts and Coudersport lost three more businesses last month. Does this sound like a statistical powerhouse to you?

To add insult to injury apparently DCNR intends to proceed with their $10 million “interpretive center” for the Wilds area. One can only imagine the multiple 65” widescreen TV’s bolted to the walls telling us the great success story of introducing Yellowstone elk in PA to replace the extirpated native elk. Amazing how Yellowstone keeps repeating itself in this column.

Per my estimates in our golden egg era 250,000 hunters traveled to northcentral PA to hunt deer every year. I estimate they spent anywhere from $250 to $500 each and stayed for a week or more. The economic impact on these twelve rural counties was easily and realistically $100 million per year. That is all gone due to the inclusion of an anti-hunting agenda built into the PA Wilds program.

Here is a novel idea. Now that DCNR is liming their forest cuts, it is obvious deer were not the cause of our regeneration problems. It is further apparent the deer slaughter was unjustified, anti-hunting driven and an agenda to destroy the PGC. How about we don’t build that interpretive center, but instead we demand DCNR to use the $10 million to put the deer back.

How about we save our proven $5 billion dollar hunting industry and the economic future of the communities and citizens of northcentral PA?

Jim Slinsky is the host and producer of the “Outdoor Talk Network”, a nationally syndicated, outdoor-talk radio program. For a station near you or to contact Jim, visit his website at www.outdoortalknetwork.com.

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