Economic Benefits

This analysis of the economic benefits of B.C.'s protected areas found the following:
- For every dollar invested by the government, there were ten dollars in visitor expenditures
- Almost one-third of expenditures were from out-of-province visitors ($148 million)
- Economic activity in the parks system sustains approximately 9,100 direct and indirect person years of employment every year
- The economic benefits of parks is widely distributed across the province, with one half of benefits occurring outside of the lower mainland and Victoria regions

In a similar analysis to the above report, this focused specifically on the federal parks system (national parks, historic sites, marine conservation areas) and associated economic impacts. Canada's national parks created almost 42,000 full time equivalent jobs resulting in $1.9 billion in labour income and a $3.0 billion contribution to the country's GDP in the fiscal year 2008/09.

The authors argue that economic valuation has been able to provide strong, and much needed, arguments for Protected Areas as a profitable and economically beneficial resource and has increased the priority accorded to these areas in development decision-making.

This report looks at several "First Principles for Conservation and Human Development Dialogue" and notes that "these principles formalized a new approach to conservation that will develop effective protection of natural resources by informing strategies with economic and human development needs, while maintaining that human development efforts would be more effective if integrated with conservation principles."

This study estimated that Canada's national, provincial and territorial parks created over 64,000 full time equivalent jobs resulting in $2.9 billion in labour income and a $4.6 billion contribution to the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the fiscal year 2008/09. In British Columbia, almost 9,900 full time equivalent jobs were created resulting in $544 million in labour income and a $728 billion contribution to the province's GDP.

The Economic Impact Model for Parks used by this study is publicly available at http://174.143.205.154/miep-eimpa/.

While older than the two previous reports, this study assessed the economic significance of a broader group of nature-related activities. Canadians and visitors from the United States spent an estimated $11.7 billion on nature-related activities in 1996, supporting 215,000 jobs and $5.4 billion in government revenue from taxes. Major areas of expenditures included $7.2 billion for general outdoor activities in natural areas, $1.9 billion for recreational fishing, $1.3 billion for wildlife viewing and $800 million for hunting.