Eurasian Otter (Lutra lutra) Photo by Gaurika Wijeratne at https://www.flickr.com/photos/gaurika/9639580887/

Dear Readers, you might have read about a pioneering project in Somerset, based around the River Tone, which is asking volunteers to try to look at the habitats around the river as if they were not humans, but a particular animal – the participants can choose between an otter, a kestrel, a salmon, an earthworm or a red deer. They are then taught about the lives and senses of their chosen animal, and asked to walk along the river, imagining how their animal might perceive it.

Imagining yourself as an animal has probably been going on for as long as there have been humans (after all, hunters would have needed a deep understanding of the creatures that they hunted) but science gives us a much more detailed appreciation of what the world looks like to say, a bumblebee with its ultra-violet vision, or a salmon picking up the scent of its home river. Of course, it’s not possible to actually ‘be’ the animal, but it did give the volunteers an insight into the lives of their creatures, and especially an understanding of risk.

One participant chose the otter – as otters are so sensitive to vibration, she noticed how the constant  rumble of nearby trains and cars would have disrupted the senses of the animal. She, and another  volunteer who identified with the kestrel, also noticed the ubiquity of dogs. While owners stick to paths, dogs root around everywhere, plus there is a strong body of evidence that the flea treatments given to dogs kill water invertebrates, resulting in less fish. I shall probably write a bit more on this subject soon – there’s a very good article about it in British Wildlife magazine this week. But for now, it’s enough to note that dogs have a profound impact on most species of wildlife, from frightening ground-nesting birds to affecting the hunting sites of kestrels.  There is a good case to be made for having areas where neither humans nor dogs are allowed, but of course this conflicts with the whole ‘right to roam’ ethos.

The emotional responses of the volunteers are very interesting. There’s this, from the Guardian:

‘Phil Tovey, the director of nature-centric approaches at ASRA and a former soldier, said the testimonies they received from the “as-otter”, “as-kestrel” and others were rather like civilians caught in a war zone who struggled to find food, safety or shelter. “We 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.”

Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) Photo by By Andreas Trepte, http://www.photo-natur.de, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14325567

The River Tone study will be written up as an academic paper, but the project reflects a growing trend in nature conservation, which tries to see the landscape through the eyes of its non-human inhabitants. You might remember an interesting book by Charles Foster, ‘Being a Beast‘, in which he tried on the ‘skin’ of various animals, including a badger, an urban fox and an otter. Does this help us to personalise the threats to a particular animal, and to make us more engaged with them? Does it help a community to take action? It  will be interesting to look at the River Tone project and see what happens. 

You can try out the ‘Risks Beyond Human Eyes’ exercises here.

Expertise comes from ASRA (the Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment), and you can read about them here.

The project was funded by the Ecological Citizens Network and you can read about them here.