More Americans are engaged in wildlife-related recreation, but while the total number of U.S. hunters is down, Pennsylvania is bucking the trend.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released its 2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation yesterday. Linked to the U.S. Census and conducted about every five years since 1955, the survey is considered an important wildlife-related database, a baseline for federal, state and industry analysis of the ways Americans spend money on outdoors recreation.

According to the survey, 87.5 million U.S. residents 16 years and older participated in wildlife-related outdoors recreation in 2006, a 6-percent increase from 2001. While the number of hunters and anglers dropped from 37.8 million in 2001 to 33.9 million in 2006, they're spending more per person on outdoors equipment. The total number of wildlife watchers has increased by 8 percent since 2001, but there has been little change in the amount they spend on that activity.

"That does give cause for concern," said Joshua Winchell, spokesman for U.S. Fish and Wildlife. "We're seeing the same downward trend in hunting and fishing participation, generally associated with a shift from rural to more urban living. That's troubling for everyone, because of the huge amount of revenue for wildlife management and land acquisition generated through excise taxes on hunting and fishing equipment. Similar taxes are not levied on other recreational equipment, so [wildlife watchers] who don't hunt or fish are enjoying resources largely funded by hunters and anglers, whose numbers we see are declining."

Winchell also noted "a disproportionate decrease" in angler participation in the Great Lakes area. While non-Great Lakes freshwater angling decreased 10 percent from 2001 to 2006, fishing activity associated with the lakes dropped 23 percent.

"Might be gas prices," he said. "Great Lakes anglers are more dependent on boats and it's costing more to tow them."

In Pennsylvania, the number of hunters jumped from 879,000 in 2001 to 1 million last year. More than 1.3 million anglers 16 years or older spent more than 20.9 million days fishing in the state, while 3,754,000 people watched wildlife as a recreational activity.

Nationwide, wildlife-related recreation remained low among children and minority groups. In 2006, 29.9 million Americans fished, 12.5 million hunted, and 71.1 million participated in some type of wildlife watching. More than $120 billion was spent on wildlife-related recreation

The survey can be downloaded at federalasst.fws.gov/surveys/surveys.