See the link \u201cLiberals Hate Humans<\/a>\u00a0for more details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three decades later, it\u2019s not certain how radiation is affecting wildlife\u2014but it\u2019s clear that animals abound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BYJOHN WENDLE<\/p>\n\n\n\n PUBLISHED APRIL 19, 2016<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2022 13 MIN READ<\/p>\n\n\n\n CHERNOBYL, UKRAINEMarina Shkvyria watches for animal tracks as she walks toward an abandoned village in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the area sealed to the public after a nuclear power plant exploded here 30 years ago, on April 26, 1986. Spotting one, she crouches and runs her finger over the toes of a wolf print in the loose sand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It may seem strange that Chernobyl, an area known for the deadliest nuclear accident in history, could become a refuge for all kinds of animals\u2014from moose, deer, beaver, and owls to more exotic species like brown bear, lynx, and wolves\u2014but that is exactly what Shkvyria and some other scientists think has happened. Without people hunting them or ruining their habitat, the thinking goes, wildlife is thriving despite high radiation levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shkvyria is a wolf expert at the Ukraine\u2019s National Academy of Sciences, and one of a handful of scientists following the fate of Chernobyl\u2019s wildlife. She discovered the wolf pack near the village using unorthodox, but cheap, methods. \u201cWe came down here late last spring and howled, and the young wolf pups howled back from the top of that hill,\u201d she says with a mischievous smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3:08<\/p>\n\n\n\n WATCH: The absence of humans in Chernobyl\u2019s exclusion zone has created an opportunity for abundant populations of gray wolves, and other animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So far, scientists are divided on how well the animals are really doing in the exclusion zone, which straddles Ukraine and Belarus, says biologist Jim Beasley of the University of Georgia\u2019s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, who has been studying wolves there with grant support from the National Geographic Society Committee for Research and Exploration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a new study released Monday<\/a>, Beasley says that the population of large mammals on the Belarus side has increased since the disaster. He was shocked by the number of animals he saw there in a five-week survey. Camera traps captured images of a bison, 21 boars, nine badgers, 26 gray wolves, 60 raccoon dogs (an Asian species also called a tanuki<\/a>), and 10 red foxes<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s just incredible. You can\u2019t go anywhere without seeing wolves,\u201d he says. (See a video about wolves<\/a> taking back Chernobyl.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Radiation, he argues in the study, is not holding back Chernobyl wildlife populations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While researching this story, one biologist who studies Chernobyl told me I would not see any roadkill in the exclusion zone\u2014and would be lucky to hear any birds or see any animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So when I visited in early April, I made a point of counting every animal I saw. Even in the busy area between the main guard post and the remains of the Chernobyl power plant, signs of wildlife were everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Walking along sandy firebreaks used as forest highways with Shkvyria and her colleague, vole specialist Olena Burdo, we found the tracks of wolf, moose, deer, badger, and horses. I counted scores of birds: ravens, songbirds, three kinds of birds of prey, and dozens of swans paddling in the radioactive cooling pond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a herd of wild Przewalski\u2019s horses, a rare and endangered subspecies of wild horse introduced to the preserve, I counted an adult male, two adult females, and two juveniles. They charged toward us across a large shaggy field, their brush-like black manes standing straight up from taupe bodies, and took a long look at us as disused power lines swayed in the distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We also saw the handiwork of beavers\u2014everywhere. The growth of their populations in recent years may be one of the most important things to happen in the zone\u2019s ecology. After placing the camera trap on the trunk of a pine, Shkvyria, Burdo, and I walk along a path, eventually entering a village of rotting wooden cottages slowly being swallowed up by scrubby pines, birches, and willows. Here the earth had been torn up by a sounder of foraging boars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the opposite end of the village, a perfectly straight Soviet canal still drained the low-lying land. The bright chips of a freshly chewed birch still lay at the base of a tree. Felled birches, some three feet around, lay across the water, up and down the length of the ditch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLiterally three weeks ago that tree was still standing,\u201d Shkvyria says, pointing to the pale chips. \u201cThe beaver population is growing. Beavers can return it to being a little bit more wild,\u201d she says. Eventually, as the beavers fell trees, the land will return to bogs. \u201cIt will become like it was a hundred years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe beaver in Ukraine is exactly like the elephant in Africa: it completely changes the look of the landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The combined territory of the exclusion zones in Ukraine and Belarus caused by the Chernobyl disaster<\/a> is a little more than 1,600 square miles, making it one of the largest truly wild sanctuaries in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But what it means for animals to be rebounding in Chernobyl has become the scientific equivalent of a boxing match, with the latest blow delivered Monday when Beasley put forward a study in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His study catalogued 14 species of mammals, and \u201cfound no evidence to suggest that their distributions were suppressed in highly contaminated areas within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.\u201d The abstract ends pointedly. \u201cThese data support the results of other recent studies, and contrast with research suggesting that wildlife<\/a> populations are depleted within the CEZ.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n about:blank<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1:20<\/p>\n\n\n\n CHERNOBYL FOX MAKES A SIX-LAYER SANDWICH<\/p>\n\n\n\n April 30, 2015 \u2013 In Ukraine, a fox in the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant stacks up bread and meat thrown to it by a group of journalists. Click here to read more: \u201d A viral video of a red fox got us wondering: Just how much can they eat? \u201d Video courtesy\u2026Read More<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anders Pape M\u00f8ller, a Danish scientist at the University of Paris-Sud who has studied swallows in nuclear environments, says his research shows otherwise. \u201cThese animals in Chernobyl and Fukushima live 24 hours a day in these contaminated sites. Even if the actual dose for one hour is not extremely high, after a week or after a month, it adds up to a lot. These effects are certainly at a level where you could see dramatic consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n His research<\/a> with biologist Timothy Mousseau has shown that voles have higher rates of cataracts, useful populations of bacteria on the wings of birds in the zone are lower, partial albinism among barn swallows, and that cuckoos have become less common, among other findings. Serious mutations, though, happened only right after the accident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both sides agree that radiation is bad for people and bad for animals; the debate is over how bad and whether it has caused populations to decline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The debate among scientists over the effects of low levels of ionizing radiation on wildlife and humans is heated and political, especially after the Fukushima catastrophe five years ago. With 30 years of history now to draw from, Chernobyl is the proving ground. (Read \u201cThe Long Shadow of Chernobyl<\/a>\u201d for a view of the site 20 years after the disaster.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n This year will mark the half-life of cesium-137, one of the most widespread and dangerous of the radionuclides released. That means the amount of cesium has dropped by about half in the 30 years since the accident, decaying into the short-lived barium-137m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For animals, radioactive material enters the system through the food chain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Shkvyria places a camera trap on a pine tree near the wolf hillock, Burdo explains. \u201cMushrooms concentrate radiation. Voles love mushrooms. When they eat contaminated mushrooms, they concentrate the radiation in their bodies. When wolves eat voles, they pick up the contamination.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the level of radionuclide contamination in an animal depends both on concentrations in its habitat and on the diet and behaviors of the animal, she says. Radiation deposited by fallout from Chernobyl has been measured as far away as Norway in reindeer, but it is patchily spread in the exclusion zone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wolves, in particular, may get at least some protection from radiation because they have a big territory and move around a lot, even outside the zone into cleaner areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI would argue that for many of those species [the effects of radiation], even if they\u2019re there, probably aren\u2019t enough to suppress populations to the point where they can\u2019t sustain themselves,\u201d says Beasley. In the zone, \u201chumans have been removed from the system and this greatly overshadows any of those potential radiation effects.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Essentially, this means that human populations have a bigger negative impact than radiation<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/c0420275-24c1-490d-a916-a5183dbddc47\/00000154-1bd4-dbf2-a1f5-1ffccd340000.jpg?w=652.5359387397766&h=367.30796551704407\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nSigns of Life<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Debate Continues<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/i.natgeofe.com\/n\/b551417d-84bc-4c86-a953-f906982d9562\/0000014d-06cd-deb3-ad7f-f6ff52c30001.jpg?w=652.5359387397766&h=367.30796551704407\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nRacking Up Radiation<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Poaching and Protecting<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n