Chernobyl: a Wildlife Sanctuary?

solarz

Brigadier
I found this article fascinating:

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It really turns the idea of a "nuclear wasteland" on its head. Radiation, beyond the lethal levels immediately following a nuclear explosion, seems to have no effect on the health of populations! I'm sure those animals don't live as long as animals elsewhere, but on an evolutionary level, this is irrelevant. As long as they live long enough to give birth, and that their fertility rate isn't affected, then we will see healthy wildlife populations even in irradiated areas.

I wonder if that's what will happen to humanity after a nuclear apocalypse? The immediate radiation and the nuclear winter that follows would wipe out 99% of humanity, but those who survive will be able to repopulate the planet quickly, albeit leading vastly reduced lives?

Instead of barren wastelands, maybe a post-nuclear world is a teeming jungle?
 

subotai1

Junior Member
Registered Member
I think you are reading the wrong conclusion in to that article. First, yes there was a wasteland and still is, closer to the reactor you get. There are a huge number of things going on there that are not immediately obvious to a photo-journalist. I would suggest this article as a far better source of the effects:

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solarz

Brigadier
I think you are reading the wrong conclusion in to that article. First, yes there was a wasteland and still is, closer to the reactor you get. There are a huge number of things going on there that are not immediately obvious to a photo-journalist. I would suggest this article as a far better source of the effects:

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The above article is based on a study by Mousseau that had a flawed methodology.

Here is an article highlighting those flaws:

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an excerpt said:
Chernobyl’s abundant and surprisingly normal-looking wildlife has shaken up how biologists think about the environmental effects of radioactivity. The idea that the world’s biggest radioactive wasteland could become Europe’s largest wildlife sanctuary is completely counterintuitive for anyone raised on nuclear dystopias.

The news isn’t good for all animals. Many species that like human company—swallows, white storks, pigeons—mostly left the region along with the people. Also, small creatures seem to be more vulnerable to the effects of radiation than large ones. That may be why Chernobyl rodents studied in the 1990s had shorter life spans and smaller litters than their counterparts outside the zone. Stag beetles had uneven horns. But it didn’t affect their population numbers.

And because the health of wild animal species is usually judged by their numbers rather than the conditions of individuals, Chernobyl wildlife is considered healthy. According to all the population counts performed by Ukraine and Belarus over the past 27 years, there is enormous animal diversity and abundance. The prevailing scientific view of the exclusion zone has become that it is an unintentional wildlife sanctuary. This conclusion rests on the premise that radiation is less harmful to wildlife populations than we are.

In an effort to challenge that view, biologists Timothy Mousseau of the University of South Carolina and Anders Moller of the University of Paris have published a series of papers claiming that
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,
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, and
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are declining in Chernobyl’s most contaminated regions. They also contend that birds
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in highly radioactive areas. They dismiss contrary reports of animal abundance as anecdotes.


Their work has attracted media attention, especially after the Fukushima nuclear calamity in Japan, perhaps because it fits so well with the zombie/mutant meme.

A phalanx of experts in environmental radioactivity have
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Mousseau and Moller’s
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and
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, however, while the Ukrainian co-author who did the field work has repudiated their article claiming that birds avoid radioactive areas. He told
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that the experiments were never designed to test that hypothesis.

One flaw in the scientists’ research is that they studied the most inappropriate place possible. Moller and Mousseau claim that the greatest negative effects on wildlife populations are in Chernobyl’s “most contaminated” places—using the plural, which suggests they tested a lot of them. While the Chernobyl exclusion zone contains many “very contaminated” territories, it contains five “most contaminated” patches, and they sampled only one, the Red Forest. A stand of pine trees that turned red when high radiation killed their chlorophyll, the Red Forest was buried on the spot and planted with pine saplings. It is one of the few places you can still find the plant deformities seen shortly after the disaster. The young trees are short and stunted, resembling crazy twisted bushes.

It looks nothing like a natural pine forest. The birds that the Mousseau and Moller claim are avoiding radioactive areas are actually avoiding a really weird-looking habitat. It is hardly possible to pick a Chernobyl location guaranteed to have fewer animals. To then suggest that the low wildlife numbers in the Red Forest is representative of the remaining 99.098 percent of the zone’s territory is like claiming that animals are declining in Yellowstone National Park because you found few spiders in the parking lot.

Deep in the zone’s interior, where the other “most contaminated” patches are and humans aren’t, is a restored swamp in Belarus where I once watched an amazing multitude of ducks, egrets, swans, and once-rare black storks rise in a raucous, squawking cloud, while a moose watched us from the other side of the road. Lake Hlyboke, by far the most radioactive waterway in the world, is another “most contaminated” place, where I spotted a black grouse, a flock of partridges, and three roe deer during an hour’s visit. A 2011 study found that species diversity is greater there than at any other Chernobyl lake.

Mousseau conceded in an email that “it is quite possible for there to be more animals in the radioactive areas” outside the places he and Moller studied. But
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that “Over all, it’s a myth to suggest that animal abundances are higher in the Chernobyl exclusion zones.” And over email, he went on to assert, as he has many times, that no one has ever gone out and actually counted the animals—even though Belarus conducted systematic animal studies from 2005 to 2007 and selective censuses since.

Those studies found mammal diversity and abundance equal to that of a protected nature reserve, with rare species including bears, lynx, river otter, and badger as well as introduced herds of European bison and Przewalski’s horses. Bird diversity is even richer and includes 61 rare species. Whooper swans—never before reported in the region—now appear regularly.

Mousseau says they’ve changed their research protocols in response to some of their critics, but so far he and Moller have not ventured out of the Red Forest to research deeper into the other “most contaminated” places in Chernobyl’s evacuated zone. It will be a shame for science if they don’t. They are among the very few Western scientists doing research here. Until they find more meaningful measures of radiation’s impact on wildlife abundance, their broad claims about declining animal populations really apply to just one highly unrepresentative location.
 
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