Abstract
The island of San Cristóbal, Galapagos and its surrounding waters exemplifies a Human-ArtifactualNatural System (HANS) shaped by the interaction of scientific, fishery, tourism, and national park constituencies. Emic (experience near) understandings of resident cognitions of nature are revealed in this exploratory study with methods of cognitive and cultural anthropology. A pile-sort task was administered to 32 tourism broker and local residents who grouped 26 flora/fauna stimuli including iconic, endangered and introduced species according to their similarity and gave their reasons. These data were subjected to multidimensional scaling and hierarchical clustering analyses. Results show that residents sorted the fauna/flora stimuli in ways that reflect biological/taxonomic, instrumental, conservation biology, and touristic/aesthetic dimensions. Implications of cognitive diversity are discussed for conservation and sustainable tourism.