What does a kestrel make of the dog sniffing in the long grass below? Why does an exhausted salmon pause before a weir? How will an otter experience the rumble of a passing train?<\/p>\n
Eighteen people have spent six weeks swimming, slithering and soaring as otters, salmon, earthworms, red deer and kestrels in an attempt to better document the risks for wild animals in our human-dominated landscape.<\/p>\n
The volunteers were trained to experience distinctive animal \u201cumwelts\u201d and report back on the reality of being a non-human animal trying to survive around the River Tone in Somerset<\/a>, England.<\/p>\n Anita Roy searched for a suitable place to deposit her spraint as she got into the mindset of an otter. Photograph: Jim Wileman\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Anita Roy, a nature writer, chose to be an otter in what she called the \u201crevolutionary\u201d Risks Beyond Human Eyes<\/a> research study. \u201cOtters are apex predators, playful and fierce. I like their style,\u201d she said. \u201cThe whole point was not to go out and see an otter but to be in the world as if you had taken that imaginative leap into otterhood, and see what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n In the pioneering study \u2013 conducted by the University of the West of England and the Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment (ASRA<\/a>), funded by the Ecological Citizen(s) Network<\/a> \u2013 participants were given a detailed scientific briefing about the sensory powers of their chosen \u201canimal collaborators\u201d and trained to undertake exercises in the wild.<\/p>\n Otters sense a lot through their whiskers and paws, so otter volunteers were encouraged to pay attention to vibrations. Photograph: Roy Waller\/Alamy<\/p>\n Encouraged to use a single key sense, they were advised by social anthropologists on the research team not to interpret, explain or evaluate, but simply to describe their experiences. By \u201cde-centering\u201d human understanding, they were told they might allow another understanding to come through, before they reported their oral testimonies back to researchers.<\/p>\n Roy said she began her life as an otter by scanning the riverbank for suitable places to deposit her spraint. \u201cAssessing the landscape for a suitable place to poo isn\u2019t something I normally do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Because otters sense so much through their whiskers and paws, she was encouraged to pay attention to vibrations. She was struck by the thundering disturbance caused by trains on the nearby railway line that would disorientate her otter during fish-hunts.<\/p>\n Helen Lawy was attracted to living as a kestrel by the appeal of being \u2018free\u2019. Photograph: Jim Wileman\/The Guardian<\/p>\n She and another volunteer, Helen Lawy, who sought to experience the world as a kestrel, became newly aware of the ubiquity of dogs. \u201cPeople stick to the path but dogs are rooting around all the time,\u201d said Lawy. \u201cThat\u2019s a massive issue we all need to face up to. Everybody is always wanting open access everywhere \u2013 I came to the conclusion that kestrels would probably like some areas left alone, with nobody there.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSitting by the riverbank for two hours, there were probably 15 dogs that came past and jumped in the river or played around,\u201d added Roy. \u201cIf I had been a human, I would have said: \u2018Dogs in the river is a major problem for otters, with flea treatments entering the water.\u2019 As an otter, the testimony came out absolutely viscerally: \u2018I hate dogs!\u2019 I was really taken aback. When you are \u2018inside\u2019 the animal, the whole experience is extremely emotional.\u201d<\/p>\n Kestrels like to hunt for voles and mice in long grass. Photograph: Mark Hughes\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Lawy, who is the chair of the Friends of Longrun Meadow<\/a>, a community green space beside the River Tone, said she was attracted to living as a kestrel by the appeal of being \u201cfree\u201d. She did not try to fly \u2013 \u201cI thought that might be a step too far\u201d \u2013 but imagined her kestrel-self searching for long grass where she could hunt for voles and mice. \u201cWhen you look at a landscape through a kestrel\u2019s eyes, you realise there\u2019s very little opportunity for them to feed. Far from being free, the kestrel was reduced to looking for disjointed little strips of land.\u201d<\/p>\n James Grischeff, the director of nature recovery at Somerset Wildlife Trust<\/a>, who volunteered to step into the mind of an earthworm, said: \u201cI\u2019ve been a nature conservationist for a very long time and my training has been in soils, but this project did a lot more than I expected \u2013 it really made me get under the skin of worms. It was fascinating, it wasn\u2019t exactly a trance but there was a moment where you went: \u2018OK, that\u2019s how these worms interact with the environment.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n James Grischeff was trained to experience the world as an earthworm. Photograph: Jim Wileman\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Phil Tovey, the director of nature-centric approaches at ASRA and a former soldier, said the testimonies they received from the \u201cas-otter\u201d, \u201cas-kestrel\u201d and others were rather like civilians caught in a war zone who struggled to find food, safety or shelter. \u201cWe heard that access was deeply stressed. When the volunteers gave their testimonies they were on the verge of tears. They took it so seriously but none of them dramatised it.\u201d<\/p>\n Roy said she was almost crying when a fellow volunteer described how his salmon-self was too weary to leap up a fish-run constructed to supposedly help salmon around the weirs on the River Tone. \u201cWe mostly think of nature as biodiversity, a concept, but this made it so personal, so emotional and so horrific,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was hard to feel how we\u2019ve made the world a really hostile place for all these individual creatures. When that\u2019s you, you really feel it. It was quite galvanising.\u201d<\/p>\n Charles Foster has written about living as a badger, among other woodland creatures. Photograph: Felicity McCabe\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The project reflects a growing interest in the rights of nature movement and the burgeoning More-Than-Human Life<\/a> programme, and follows innovative thinkers such as Charles Foster<\/a>, whose pioneering book Being a Beast documented him living as a fox, red deer, badger and swift<\/a>.<\/p>\n The study will be written up for academic journals, but Tovey said its second phase \u2013 a plan to revitalise the wild River Tone \u2013 would hopefully trigger local action.<\/p>\n \u201cWe should definitely do more of this kind of work,\u201d he said. \u201cAnimals are here, active and shaping the very ground that we live on. We have to find a way to acknowledge them, and not in an abstract or performative way,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to accept that we live in a multispecies society, as our Indigenous brothers and sisters know.\u201d<\/p>\n Roy added: \u201cWe\u2019re already living in a multiverse, it\u2019s right on our doorstep and yet [through our destruction of nature] we\u2019re trying to make it into a monoverse.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What does a kestrel make of the dog sniffing in the long grass below? 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