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Resource sustainability requires recognising and developing pathways to integrate local and Indigenous knowledges alongside conservation and sustainability sciences within management practices and governance. However, knowledge never occurs in a vacuum, and is always mediated by the beliefs, values, or stances towards its possession or use within particular contexts. Focusing on the unprecedented renewal of a traditional practice of natural resource management in French Polynesia called rāhui, this article investigates the local conceptions, perceptions, and expectations (CPE) that mediate between community knowledges, plans, and actions, and inputs from conservation and sustainability sciences. Drawing on a multi-year ethnographic study focused on the CPE of two coastal communities around Tahiti's Taiarapu coast, our results show the CPE that shape relationships between conservation sciences' inputs toward decision and policy-making and community governance and management over nearshore marine resources can differ meaningfully. Moreover, we suggest that evidence of such differences that exist despite socioeconomic, cultural, or demographic similarities indicates that the specificities of local communities' CPE around conservation and sustainability sciences should be carefully considered before and alongside any conservation or management action. In the context of a resurgent Indigenous resource management practice called rāhui on Tahiti's Taiarapu coast, this study analyses the local conceptions, perceptions, and expectations (CPE) which mediate between the community-led resource management and inputs and insights from conservation and sustainability sciences. Meaningful differences between similarly-situated local communities indicate that local communities' CPE around conservation and sustainability sciences should be carefully considered before and alongside any conservation or management action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human settlement into new regions is typically accompanied by waves of animal extinctions, yet we have limited understanding of how human communities perceived and responded to such ecological crises. The first megafaunal extinctions in New Zealand began just 700 years ago, in contrast to the deep time of continental extinctions. Consequently, indigenous Māori oral tradition includes ancestral sayings that explicitly refer to extinct species. Our linguistic analysis of these sayings shows a strong bias towards critical food species such as moa, and emphasizes that Māori closely observed the fauna and environment. Temporal changes in form and content demonstrate that Māori recognized the loss of important animal resources, and that this loss reverberated culturally centuries later. The data provide evidence that extinction of keystone fauna was important for shaping ecological and social thought in Māori society, and suggest a similar role in other early societies that lived through megafaunal extinction events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]