Natural Resource Needs Assessment Survey and a Nonmarket Valuation Study of Nevada's Big Game Hunts

This thesis has four parts. First, we discuss natural resource conservation in Nevada. Second, we describe the development and implementation of a general population natural resource needs assessment survey. Third, we present and discuss the data collected in Clark County, Nevada and Lincoln County, Nevada. We then detail how the information collected corresponds to the Natural Resource Conservation Service farm planning tool known as SWAPA. Fourth, with data from the survey, we use nonmarket valuation methods to estimate the marginal willingness to pay for big game hunting trip attributes including: the type of animal, habitat quality, site accessibility, and solitude. We find that these attributes contribute to the benefits received from Nevada big game hunts and that Nevada big game hunts provide significant benefits to hunters state-wide