Research on ecosystem services (ES) is heavily concentrated on ecological and economic indicators and values, with a much more limited understanding of communities’ dependence on cultural ES. That body of research is also typically focused on current generations and generates limited insights into the intergenerational dynamics of ES dependence. We use a survey of six palm harvesting communities in coastal western Ecuador to assess the livelihood dependence of four generations on 17 ES provided by the ivory palm, a near-threatened keystone species in Ecuador, Colombia, and Panama. Despite the historical prominence of the use of the ivory palm’s nut, we find that dependence is highest for regulating, supporting, and cultural ES, a result that holds across generations. We find a negative association between the current generation’s dependence on the ivory palm’s provisioning ES and that of their grandparents, who experienced the historical boom of the ivory palm’s nut exports. In contrast, respondents expect the future generation’s dependence to be positively associated with that of the grandparents’ generation. We find that provisioning ES have a complementary relationship with cultural ES and a substitutive relationship with supporting ES. Relationships across ES categories can be reversed from one generation to the next.

We assessed hunters’ willingness to participate in a scheme to recover the costs associated with processing diseased game. The results indicated that fifty-one percent of the hunters in a region affected by chronic wasting disease are interested in such a scheme and willing to pay an average of $20 per animal. Their willingness to participate is affected by risk perception, hunting experience, use of processing services, and income. Further, establishing such a market-based scheme would be financially profitable to game processors and helpful to wildlife agencies interested in encouraging hunters’ harvest to reduce herds and facilitate effective disease surveillance.