A Place for Fish? Contemporary Senses of Place and Implications for Atlantic Salmon and Other Native Species on the Brink

People, places and fish have long been linked, with communities being strategically situated to access fisheries resources, and individual and collective identities being closely tied to those resources and associated places.  Likewise, as people modify landscapes, they shape fish communities and dictate fisheries productivity and the quality and quantity of available habitat.  Increased access to fisheries resources originating from distant places has shifted human reliance away from those available locally on a seasonal basis, and weakened the fish-person-place connection.  We explored the relative salience of native diadromous fish in contemporary senses of place in Maine, and implications for the geographically widespread restoration of a largely absent and easily substituted species, endangered Atlantic salmon.  We characterized residents’ attachment to and satisfaction with home turf waterbodies and species communities, and assessed likely engagement in waterbody conservation within the historical range of Maine Atlantic salmon.  Our findings suggest that while waterbodies are almost universally valued as escapes, a native community of fish is non-essential for this important need to be met.  Sense of place literature suggests that motivation to act on behalf of a place (and its fish) hinges on high attachment, coupled with low satisfaction.  Our finding that residents are generally satisfied with contemporary waterbody conditions has important implications for public engagement in native species recovery and habitat restoration. We discuss these findings in the context of public awareness of fisheries ecology, and the need to link intact habitats and fish communities to healthy human communities, especially if we want to draw on the relationships people develop within their home turf to engage others in their social network.