Name: Gal Zanir
Location: Israel
Initiative Title: Nature Perspectives
Short Description of Initiative: Nature Perspectives enables people to reconnect with nature around them through meaningful conversations. We are simulating nonhuman perspectives and enabling every person to imagine and relate to the lived experiences of other beings.
Sectors: AI, Conservation Technology, Environmental Education
Website: www.natureperspectives.earth
Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gal-zanir/
Gal is a passionate wildlife biologist and entrepreneur at the forefront of conservation innovation, with deep expertise in leveraging emerging technologies to drive systemic change. He co-founded Wild Biotech Ltd, where he led global expeditions to unravel the secrets of wildlife microbiomes. He holds a Master’s in Conservation Leadership from the University of Cambridge, where he explored “The Rethinking of Conservation Paradigms.”
At Unearthodox, Gal co-led the "Digital Disruption" and "SciFi, AI, and Futures for Nature" initiatives, publishing resources that make emerging technologies accessible to the wider conservation community.
Nature Perspectives is the culmination of his lifelong devotion to nature and a testament to his ingenuity. Gal and his team are embarking on an exciting journey to simulate more-than-human perspectives, using AI to enable meaningful conversations with the natural world. Through immersive, conversational experiences, they seek to reimagine our relationships with the more-than-human world, promote nature’s agency in our societies, and spark new scientific endeavours.
In this conversation, Gal shares how his childhood sparked a lifelong devotion to nature, why empathy and agency are key to reimagining conservation, and how AI can help us see—and listen to—the natural world in profoundly new ways.
As a child, I would run off to the hills near my hometown. I spent so much time there that I grew familiar with every rock, plant, and path—and with the many individual animals sharing that tiny local jewel with me. I remember countless moments of connection and shared understanding with the other species I came to know.
I also vividly remember the day the bulldozers arrived, destroying this beloved ecosystem to make way for construction. I felt helpless, watching the homes of all my fellow non-humans being demolished. As a child who had come to know and love this place, it was both devastating and motivating.
That experience cultivated my lifelong devotion to nature and my commitment to reigniting our connection with it in the most creative ways possible, so that other children might experience that same sense of connection I was lucky enough to feel.
The system I'm working to transform is our broader society, specifically, our relationships with nature and the limited agency nature has within human systems. At Nature Perspectives, we see nature conservation fundamentally as an issue of empathy and agency. When nature’s voice is absent in courtrooms deciding its fate, nature lacks agency. If people ignore nature rather than act for it in their daily lives, that too is a form of disempowerment.
We seek to transform society by promoting nature’s agency, either by directly giving nature a voice or by fostering empathetic connections, so nature gains agency in human consciousness. Ultimately, we are directly reshaping the way people perceive, interact, and relate to the rest of nature.
In a time when people are increasingly encouraged to connect with their technological devices—cars, phones, or even home assistants—we’re harnessing the extraordinary capabilities of large language models not to further deepen this trend, but to redirect it. We use AI’s unique ability to foster connection through conversation and extend it to the one thing we truly need to reconnect with: nature. In doing so, we challenge conventional tech narratives by offering a radically different use of cutting-edge technology.
We also shift conservation away from a detached, species-level view rooted in data alone. Instead, we focus on individual stories and emotional connections and actively aim to help people build personal, empathetic relationships with the more-than-human world, all grounded in scientific integrity.
Finally, we challenge the assumption that conservation must rely solely on charitable funding. We’re building Nature Perspectives as a For-Purpose enterprise, one that delivers measurable impact and generates sustainable revenue. This enables us to fairly compensate our team and reinvest in expanding our impact. It’s a financially viable model for conservation that diverges from the standard charity-based approach, which often struggles to sustain meaningful change.
We treat our technology as a tool. A first spark to motivate people to engage more deeply with nature through gamification, shared experiences, and accessible ecological knowledge. Every aspect of Nature Perspectives is carefully designed to promote direct, unmediated interactions with the natural world. Our interfaces intentionally draw attention outward to the natural entity being engaged with. Our conversations prompt people to look closer, listen, smell, imagine, and touch. Technology, for us, is the catalyst that leads users toward deeper emotional and sensory connections, ultimately inspiring lasting relationships with nature.
That unnoticed tree in your neighbourhood becomes visible and engaging as our technology motivates you to uncover its unique story and imagine its lived experience.
Initially, I wasn't fond of using technology for nature conservation—to put it mildly. I believed technology symbolised our denial of problematic relationships with nature. But interacting with ChatGPT in its early days changed that. I realised that, perhaps for the first time, technology could rekindle our connection with nature in ways I had never imagined. Still, I know the journey toward meaningful change is ongoing, and I’ll likely need to unlearn many more assumptions along the way.
The primary ethical consideration for Nature Perspectives is respectful representation. We grapple with questions like: “How do you decide which personality represents each natural entity?”—and our answer is: we don’t. Instead, we guide our AI models to generate scientifically grounded perspectives that move beyond human biases. We want people to encounter the richness and complexity of nature by opening the door to other ways of seeing.
We also integrate diverse cultural perspectives on species, ensuring interactions are both culturally resonant and sensitive. Most importantly, we stay in close ongoing dialogue with our users, listening, learning and addressing any ethical challenges as they arise.
Wow—every time I interact with a simulated nature perspective, I learn something unexpected, surprising, or awe-inspiring. Nature Perspectives just makes these more-than-human stories accessible.
I remember during the very first week of the initiative, I walked around my city, imagining all these individual more-than-humans stories that are all around us, and that we’re usually missing. One story that really stuck with me was from a lonesome tree standing in the city square. Through simulating its perspective and engaging in conversation, I discovered it wasn’t always alone—it was the last remnant of a whole sycamore fig plantation, long before the square was built. The tree shared how it used to communicate with other trees through their root systems, and how locals gathered its fruits for jam. Most moving of all, it told me the reason it’s still standing is because people protested in the 1930s to protect the trees. That tree, which I had passed by countless times, now carries a whole new meaning.
It’s not a cliché—entrepreneurship, especially with radical innovation, is a rollercoaster. You’re often stuck in chicken-or-egg loops: no funding, no team, no prototype, no pilots, no proof of concept. At that point, you need someone (a funder) who gets it—someone who believes in the vision before there’s anything tangible and gives you space to build something meaningful.
What’s equally crucial is peer support. Getting to connect with others on similar paths—or who’ve already been through the ups and downs—makes all the difference. That’s what I found in the Exploration Co-Lab cohort: a rare space to share openly, support each other, and feel a little less alone in the chaos of creation.
The people. The inspiring individuals in this cohort were a big part of what drew me in. Some were already innovators I admired. The opportunity to work alongside and learn from them is incredibly rewarding.
We aim to inspire generations to cherish and deeply connect with the more-than-human world. Just as nature documentaries have moved people to dedicate their lives to conservation, I hope that Nature Perspectives will inspire a global generation of young individuals to form meaningful relationships with nature. If we succeed, this new medium of connection will nurture a generation that not only appreciates nature but dedicates their lives to caring for it.
This insight is part of a series highlighting our first cohort of the Exploration Co-Lab. Read more about the Exploration Co-Lab here.
You can also read more insight pieces like this here.
The content of this piece represents the author’s own views and does not necessarily represent the views of Unearthodox or of any of its collaborating institutions.
