Posted on 10/07/2015 7:00:16 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Wolves are seven times as common in the Chernobyl area than they were (Image: Sergey Gashchak)
The site of the world’s worst nuclear accident is now a wildlife haven. The abundance of large animals around Chernobyl, such as deer, elk and wild boar, matches that of nature reserves in the region – and wolves are seven times as common.
Some 116,000 people fled the radioactive fallout from the reactor after it exploded in 1986, and another 220,000 were resettled after that, vacating a zone covering some 4200 square kilometres split equally between Belarus and Ukraine.
“Whatever negative effects there are from radiation, they are not as large as the negative effects of having people there,” says Jim Smith of the University of Portsmouth in the UK. “We’re not saying there weren’t radiological effects at all, but we can’t see effects on populations as a whole.”
The message is clear, he says. “The everyday things we do, such as occupying an area, forestry, hunting and agriculture, are what damages the environment.”
“The striking Chernobyl findings reveal that nature can flourish if people will just leave it alone,” says Bill Laurance of James Cook University in Cairns, Australia. “This underscores the vital importance of having people-free parts of the planet.”
Lee Hannah of Conservation International says Chernobyl is a living testament to the resilience of nature. “Wild places can come back if we give them a chance, but we don’t want to rely on nuclear disasters to make this happen,” he says.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
But I though “Precious Nature” would take thousands of years to bounce back......
I really wonder sometimes, if there wasn’t a previous nuclear war in humanity’s distant past, how would we really know as the force of nature seems to bounce back so quickly.
Sorry to disappoint Jim Smith but there are people there. There have been since the day of the accident. Some never left and some left but came back shortly thereafter. There are thriving villages withing sight of the reactor. The people are healthy and seem happy. I this on a documentary called 'Pandora's Box' it was about a bunch of former environmentalist anti-nuke activists who now support nuclear energy. It was very interesting.
Yeh...but the wolves have green eyes instead of blue. We really helped Russia out with this disaster. But it seems...not so much with Japan’s disaster. Wonder why? Because it will float to our shores??
How many people do you think were killed at Chernobyl. Combine the immediate effects of the melt down and the long range deaths from cancer and other debilitating diseaes?
“Wildlife is thriving around Chernobyl since the people left”
Correction.
“Wildlife is thriving around Chernobyl 29 years after the disaster because Nature heals itself.”
We’re having a melt down. A Soviet melt down. The chickens have three legs. Now they’re laying green eggs. We’re having a big melt down.
Wildlife is thriving around Chernobyl because it takes a lot of work and energy to keep the wilderness at bay.
Let off of your defenses and work for 20 years, and it reverts back to wilderness.
Wilderness is *not* the optimum state of being for the planet or for people.
To claim that wilderness is optimum is to claim that people should not exist. That is the true heart of an earth first “environmentalist”.
25 years ago the powers that be in Colorado told us that they could not expand Stapleton International Airport because Rocky Flats (arsenal) was the most polluted place on earth.
Today on the old Rocky Flats, deer with only one head and other fauna are flourishing. The Boy Scouts hold campouts and now they are building houses on the site.
Another example might be to compare Hiroshima and Detroit. One had an atomic bomb explode over it and the other had a Democrat and protected minorities explode on it.
It was the same story with the Exxon Valdez spill. The areas that were untreated recovered more quickly since nature’s been dealing with crude oil seepages for a long time.
You made me do a little research.
But amidst the complicated real-life calculations and compromises — where science and politics meet to duke out the viability of nuclear energy — the long, deep, human parable of Chernobyl is often lost. That story is partly embodied in an unlikely community of some 130 people, called “self-settlers” who, today, live inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
Almost all of them are women, the men having died off due to overuse of alcohol and cigarettes, if not the effects of elevated radiation. About 116,000 people were evacuated from the Zone at the time of the accident. Some 1,200 of them did not accept that fate. Of that group, the remaining women, now in their 70s and 80s, are the last survivors of a group that defied authorities — and it would seem, common sense — and illegally returned to their ancestral homes shortly after the accident.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/07/opinion/morris-ted-chernobyl/
Amazing.
Don't eat that, you'll die.
Go away sonny.
In the documentary, ‘Pandora’s Box’, they introduced a report put together by the World Health Organization that staes that only 56 people died as a result of the meltdown. Not just in the immediate area, but all of Europe. One of the former anti-nuke activists on the show stated he’d been led to believe that ‘millions’ had died or were dying. I was astounded too at the number 56. I had no idea what the actual number was but assumed it was much higher.
Agenda 21 (spitting) ping
Thank you. Wilderness requires overseeing but the left scum like sierra club have agenda 21 ongoing, closing roads in the west, overloading predators to get hunters and ranchers to give up.
Kill the wolves. All of them. They are agenda 21 tools brought south from northern Alberta to replace the much smaller and less aggressive timber wolf, now apparently extinct.
Some species are best left extinct. Biodiversity is not my God.
That is exactly the war cry of the leftist agenda 21 wolfpimps. Get off the land and live in apartments, single family homes are wasteful, people are evil and the worst predators.
Agenda 21 ping
“The striking Chernobyl findings reveal that nature can flourish if people will just leave it alone,” says Bill Laurance of James Cook University in Cairns, Australia. “This underscores the vital importance of having “PEOPLE-FREE” parts of the planet.”
post 8
Wilderness is *not* the optimum state of being for the planet or for people.
To claim that wilderness is optimum is to claim that people should not exist. That is the true heart of an earth first “environmentalist”.
Especially the “One eyed, one horned, flying purple people eaters”.
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