Local ecological knowledge is the knowledge local people have of their natural resources. Local ecological knowledge can be transmitted by a variety of modes, ranging from traditional ecological knowledge, which has deep historical roots in a culture, to knowledge individuals teach themselves. Other things being equal, cultural evolutionary models suggest that if a resource’s location and availability is stable over generations, it is expected that information of how to use it would be transmitted vertically. Meanwhile, information of how to use natural resources whose availability is more sporadic spatially and/or temporally is expected to be transmitted horizontally. We tested whether this is the case, using data collected by anthropologists in four field sites across the world; from Hoonah, Alaska, USA, Zhetysu, Kazakhstan, Chiapas, Mexico, and Khovd, Mongolia. In each site, we used standardised instruments to collect data on the transmission route used to learn how to use individual species. We used publicly available repositories of the occurrences of each of these species to construct Bayesian Additive Regression Tree based Species Distribution Models to map their present range, using the standard set of Bioclimatic variables. These models were then back-cast to see how the availability of suitable habitat for each species varied over time in the last 1000 years, at 100 year intervals. The variability in the species availability with the cultural area of each studied culture, as defined by HRAF, was then associated with the mode of transmission (vertical, oblique, or horizontal) for it in the present.