摘要：Urban foraging provides city dwellers with numerous ecosystem services, but this humannature interaction is largely missing from the urban ecosystem services scholarship. Thisexploratory study aims to address this gap in the literature and examines the benefits andvalues associated with foraging in New York City, United States. We focus on Russianspeaking mushroom foragers, a previously unstudied community. Data from 10 interviewsreveals that for some groups, foraging is primarily about cultural ecosystem services, witha provisioning attribute. Foraging supports multiple benefits, most notably contributions tosocial relations, cultural heritage, and recreational experiences; these nonmaterial contributions often intertwine with material benefits. Our findings further demonstrate the mutualexchange of benefits between humans and nature, including services to ecosystems andspecies. Participants reported engagement in multiple stewardship practices and activelymaintained and enhanced ecosystem services. We encourage future ecosystem servicesassessments to recognize foraging as an urban activity and consider the bi-directionalexchange of benefits between humans and ecosystems. To some participants, foraging wasan integral part of their relationship with the natural world, intertwined with relational valuesof connection to nature, kinship, love, and care. Our results suggest that relational values canbe central for understanding the value of ecosystem services. Our study further illustrates thatsome ecosystem services may be associated with practices, rather than places, and futurework should examine these links in more detail.
