Understanding Public Opinion on Angling Issues: A Comparison of Preference Survey Methods and Results from the McKenzie River, Oregon

As managers, we need to have an understanding of angler opinions to allow us to evaluate public response to biological and social management changes.  With this information, we are able to adjust education and outreach efforts to help clarify agency needs and objectives to the public.  We often rely on opinions from members of the public who attend public meetings or contact management staff directly to provide insight into the angler population.  In these cases, however, it is impossible to tell if these opinions represent the opinions of the angling public as a whole, or instead represent only a vocal minority.  We use a case study from a 2008 proposed angling regulation prohibiting bait on a stocked portion of the McKenzie River in Oregon to highlight how we ultimately gathered angler opinions through preference surveys.  Initially, an angler preference survey was done in conjunction with a roving creel survey in 2009 to gather information on angler opinions about bait, stocking, and catch and release angling on the McKenzie River.  This created controversy, however, as some stakeholder groups felt that an on-the-ground survey overrepresented the opinions of certain angler demographics.  To address this concern, in winter 2010/2011 Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) contracted a telephone survey of licensed anglers within the geographic area encompassing the McKenzie River in an attempt to get an unbiased sample of local angler opinion.  Contacted anglers were asked about bait and hatchery trout stocking issues on the McKenzie River, regardless of whether or not they fished on the McKenzie River for trout.  This allowed managers to get a picture for the opinions of the entire local licensed angling community rather than just the active McKenzie River anglers.  In this paper, we compare and contrast the results from the two survey methods, and discuss key differences and similarities between survey results.  We conclude by discussing the efficacy of using on-the-ground surveys for understanding angler opinions. We go on to examine demographic differences between the anglers sampled in the McKenzie River telephone survey and those sampled during the ODFW 2006 statewide angler telephone survey in order to understand the applicability of statewide opinion surveys to local management needs.