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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Samuel Firman

‘I’m worried there’s too much of me,’ says a birch: inside the interspecies council giving nature a voice

Two men and a woman wearing ID cards on lanyards showing which species they represent are sat near each other in discussion
The attenders – a mix of locals and experts in their fields – represent different species from spiders to Norwegian spruces, to discuss their needs. Photograph: Bhuvana Nanaiah

“My ask of humans is quite large,” says the northern bat to a room of reindeer, wolf lichen, bog, and other beings. “It’s a shift of consciousness, and an understanding that … we are a relation.”

The scene could come from a sci-fi novel imagining a more-than-human uprising. In fact, it’s from a recent “interspecies council” in Oppdal, Norway, in which non-humans – spoken for by humans – convened to discuss the region’s future.

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