Public and professional perspectives of Virginia's stream and river resources

A ten page questionnaire was mailed to 3,000 randomly selected Virginia residents. All 169 Virginia fisheries biologists and game wardens were sent a similar but shorter questionnaire. The survey was designed to: 1) determine the relative importance of selected stream and river characteristics to public and professional respondents; 2) identify the improvements the public felt were needed on streams and rivers; 3) determine how well natural resource professionals could predict public opinion; 4) determine the relative importance of several selected Virginia stream and river user groups to public respondents; 5) determine how well natural resource professionals could predict user group importance; and 6) describe the similarities and differences between user groups. Public and professional respondents valued characteristics of streams and rivers similarly with clean water being the most important characteristic of streams and rivers and "few other people use the area" being the least important. The public felt that water quality and litter clean-up were highly needed, whereas professionals predicted that fish population improvement would be highly desired by the public. The user groups with the highest importance values were fishing, hiking/sightseeing/birdwatching, and picnicking/camping. Professionals predicted that the most important activities would be fishing, motorboating/waterskiing, and canoeing/kayaking/sailing. User groups were different with respect to: 1) use frequency; 2) 7 of 11 reasons to visit streams and rivers; and 3) importance of 5 of 9 VDGIF programs.