Hunting and Recreational Fishing
Southern Sydney offshore artificial reef
NSW DPI installed Australia’s largest artificial reef off the southern Sydney coast to increase recreational fishing opportunities. The complex has a total reef volume of around 2900 m3, is spread over two distinct reef areas and consists of 36 concrete modules, each up to five metres high and weighing over 20 tonnes. The modules were deployed in a patch-like arrangement to provide increased useability for fishers. Designed to last for many decades, the investment is not just for today’s recreational fishers but for future generations of keen anglers.
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Shut the gate on illegal hunting
NSW DPI and NSW Police Force work closely with rural communities in NSW to assist them to detect and deter illegal hunting. The Shut the gate on illegal hunting program is part of a wider program to shut the gate on rural crime in NSW. The program aims to provide information on illegal hunting to the community, empower communities to report illegal hunting, assist landholders detect and deter illegal hunting and enhanced intelligence capabilities and joint operations.
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The hunting and recreational fishing sector incorporates hunting and game management activities, and recreational fishing, including charter fishing. They are included in the measure of the total annual value of NSW’s primary industries this year as they are popular activities that contribute economic and social benefits to the Australian economy, particularly in regional areas.
Some businesses depend on the recreational fishing sector either wholly (the fishing tackle and bait industry and the fishing tour and charter industry) or for a large proportion of their income (the recreational boating industry and the tourism industry)105.
Similarly, hunting and game management activities support businesses directly related to the manufacture and sale of hunting and outdoor products and services (firearms and ammunition, camping and hunting equipment, and safety equipment related businesses), as well as specialist businesses including private game bird farms and hunting tour operators106.
Both sectors also support fuel, accommodation, and food businesses.
It is difficult to estimate the economic value of these sectors because game harvest and fishing catch are not sold and paid for in markets, unlike the catch or produce of other primary industries. They therefore do not reveal the associated value they gain from hunting game or catching fish105. As harvest or catch based (i.e. Gross Value of Production based) approaches do not capture all the community benefit elements of game hunting and recreational fishing, they cannot appropriately estimate the value of this sector.
Expenditure based measures of industry output are considered more appropriate for this sector and more comparable with Gross Value of Production measures. Using these methods, the recreational and charter fishing industry was estimated at $2.219 billion, with $1.541 billion attributed to hunting and game management. The estimated combined industry output of hunting and recreational fishing in 2017–18 was $3.760 billion.
