| 24Land Protection Plan—Wyoming Toad Conservation Area, Wyoming |
taxed based on the land’s productive capability under normal conditions. Since most of the properties within the proposed project area are classified as agricultural land and any easements would allow private landowners to keep ownership, there will be little effect on the current property tax base for Albany County.
The buying of any fee-title lands will reduce the amount of property tax revenue collected by local governments because the Service is exempt from taxation on its property holdings. However, counties would qualify for reimbursement of some property tax revenue through the Refuge Revenue Sharing Act of 1935, which allows the Service to make annual payments to local governments in areas where fee-title purchases have removed land from the tax rolls. Payments are based on the greater of 75 cents per acre or 0.75 percent of the fair market value. The exact amount of the annual payment depends on Congressional appropriations, which in recent years have tended to be substantially less than the amount needed to fully provide the authorized level of payments. In fiscal year 2010, actual payments were 22 percent of authorized levels.
Public Use and Wildlife-dependent Recreational Activities
Residents of and visitors to the Laramie Plains are attracted to the area, in part, by the abundance of wildlife. This area offers many wildlife-dependent activities, including hunting, fishing, birding, and wildlife photography, which generate millions of dollars for the State’s economy (Hulme et al. 2009).
In 2006, the WGFD estimated expenditures of $107.7 million by resident and nonresident hunters pursing the six big game species in the State: white-tailed deer, mule deer, moose, elk, bighorn sheep, and pronghorn. Resident hunters accounted for 67 percent of the total (Hulme et al. 2009). The National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation (USFWS 2008) found that in 2006, $137.3 million was spent in Wyoming by both resident and nonresident hunters. Wildlife watchers, both residents and visitors, spent a total of $394.9 million in the State of Wyoming that year as well (USFWS 2008).
