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Wildlife Returning To Chernobyl
The wilderness is encroaching over abandoned towns in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. One of the elderly residents who refused to evacuate the contaminated area says packs of wolves have eaten two of her dogs, and wild boar trample through her cornfield. Scientist are divided as to whether or not the animals are flourishing in the highly radioactive environment: "Robert J. Baker of Texas Tech University says the mice and other rodents he has studied at Chernobyl since the early 1990s have shown remarkable tolerance for elevated radiation levels. But Timothy Mousseau of the University of South Carolina, a biologist who studies barn swallows at Chernobyl, says that while wild animals have settled in the area, they have struggled to build new populations."
No: it was full of wildlife for years now.
And yes, the DNA of most animals in the area is pretty effed up, but surprisingly most of them appear healthy and reproduce normally. Only goes to show how much redundancy and resilience is built into the DNA / replicating mechanisms we use.
Truth is, even with a sufficient number of a-bombs accross the world, we'll have a very hard time wijping all of humanity and wild life. Life's a tough mother f*cker, hard to destroy.
The article seems to posit a false dichotomy between increased rates of cancer and deformity and a flourishing animal population. The usual mutation rate for most animals is pretty damn small. You could probably increase it 100 fold if not more and still maintain a large population of healthy breeding animals. Since animals, like humans, are naturally programed to prefer to breed with healthy members of their species there is no reason to think that the harmful mutations would 'take over' and cause the local animals to die out. Also just because more animals die of cancer doesn't mean they don't live long enough to successfully breed.
I mean it should be a lot like inbreeding. Sure inbreeding increases the number of seriously fucked up members of the population significantly so you wouldn't want to do it with humans but it can also be used to help establish certain useful traits fairly quickly. The animals living in the Chernobyl area might have more deformed babies, and no doubt if they had to fairly compete with non-irradiated members of their kind they would be at a disadvantage, but the long term effect might just be to increase the rate at which they evolve.
Of course you can't really decide this with a thought experiment but it is annoying that the article suggests increased deformity and cancer rates in individual animals is incompatible with overall health of the species/group.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
It's a good story, but only a story; she took a guided tour like anyone else entering the area: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Filatova
The article reports that one third of nestlings are malformed. What we have is a fairly natural cut: If the offspring is viable, it will end up being observed as behaving normally, it if is not then it won't be observed since it will be dead from, say, having the wrong shaped beak for its niche. It will be absent from counting surveys, making them biased. Most mutations are harmful so they do not survive. But, so long as less corrupted genetic material can migrate in, you'll get a superfical appearance of normalcy.
The reason for preserving wilderness is to preserve biodiversity which is essential to maintaining a strong ecosystem. This accidental wilderness has many counts against it in that context.
Another point would be that even if radiation levels were such that a lethal cancer would be 50% likely after 30 years, it wouldn't really matter to 99% of wildlife.
Mice and rodents generally have a lifespan measured in months, not years. A deer that makes it to adulthood has a maximum natural lifespan of around 15, if they make it to five they're doing good*. Large predators might live for a decade in the wild.
Most of the time, the continued existance of their races are predicated on the females having large numbers of young.
From my chernobyl research(done more than a decade ago), there has ALWAYS been a presense of plants and animals there. You have to remember, it was an actual small city, so in many cases large animal life was restricted to those that humans approved of. It takes time for concrete to crack and allow large trees such as are seen in the pictures to grow.
Then we have Baker and Mousseau argueing. I'll note that it appears that Baker appeared to concentrate on mammals(specifically rodents) while Mousseau concentrated on birds. Could it simply be that birds are more affected by radiation? That they have a tendency to wander more into the highest contamination areas? The very article notes that they've been found nesting in the sarcophagus.
While the article notes that a third of the nestlings showed abnormalities - I'd have to ask what the normal rate is. I'm aware that even normal barn swallow nestlings don't exactly have the highest survival rate.
To answer the questions, I think that the best solution would be one of radio tagging. We know average survival rates and such for outside the zone. Tag some animals, such as birds and deer, then track their survival and migration habits.
I think that we'd find that even if it's suboptimal, it's still a better area than many places activly occupied by humans.
*Does tend to live longer than bucks, as the bucks take more chances.
I don't read AC A human right
One must remember the shorter length of reproductive generations that many wild animals have.
For those who have yearly reproduction cycles, we are looking at 21 years, twenty generations for evolution to take place. Those with shorter cycles, such as mice and rats, etc. They probably have evolved enough protection through 50 or more generations that life for them is not so much of an issue.
Creatures with longer cycles, such as humans, would probably have a hard time adapting via evolution. The positive note hear is the relative short half life, but it is still a problem for future generations.
There is a study that indicates that low levels of radiation can have positive effects on health. Not that I would recommend moving to Chernobyl any time soon.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"