Sea otters, social justice, and ecosystem-service perceptions in Clayoquot Sound, Canada

In this paper, we take a first step towards better integrating social concerns into empirical ecosystem services (ES) work. We do this by adapting cognitive anthropological techniques to study the Clayoquot Sound social-ecological system, on Canada‘s Pacific coast. There, we used freelisting and ranking exercises to elicit measures of locals‘ ES values, and preferred food species, analyzing the data with ANTHROPAC. We consider the results in light of an ongoing ‗trophic cascade,‘ caused by the reintroduction and spread of sea otters (Enhydra lutris) along the island‘s coast. We find that, one, the standard academic ES typology is not well reflected in the mental categories participants (including trained ecologists) use to think about ES. Two, we find that based on current ecological models it is First Nations individuals, and women, specifically, who are most likely to perceive the most immediate ES losses from the trophic cascade, with the most certainty. The inverse holds true for non-First Nations, and men. This suggests current conservation practice in the region may be inadvertently perpetuating an experience of social injustice amongst historically marginalized demographic groups.