The God Species_ How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans - Mark Lynas [95]
But what is most striking about the ecological impacts of the Chernobyl disaster is how limited they were. There is little evidence of negative impacts on biodiversity anywhere except within a very small area immediately surrounding the reactor that received the highest doses of radiation. Some classes of animals also seemed relatively unaffected: Wild birds were raising apparently healthy chicks in the area within months. Moreover, the general environmental recovery was spectacular: Forests began to regrow within a year, while scientists studying the soil invertebrate fauna found a “total recovery” of biomass within two and a half years, and in species diversity within a decade. Ecological reports compared the effects of Chernobyl on the surrounding ecosystems as being similar to those of a forest fire: dramatic collapse and death, followed by rapid renewal. Today the eerie “red forests” are gone, replaced by vigorous new growth of pine and birch.
Scientists working in nearby woodlands in 1994, less than a decade after the disaster, were amazed at how unaffected wild animals seemed to be. “During our excursion through the woods, we trapped some of the local mice for examination in a makeshift laboratory,” write U.S. biology professors Ronald Chesser and Robert Baker. “We were surprised to find that although each mouse registered unprecedented levels of radiation in its bones and muscles, all the animals seemed physically normal, and many of the females were carrying normal-looking embryos. This was true for pretty much every creature we examined—highly radioactive, but physically normal.”53 Chesser and Baker found they had to ditch some cherished assumptions, even being forced—in great embarrassment, after several reevaluations of the original data failed to replicate the results—to retract a 1996 paper they had published in Nature claiming that voles living close to Chernobyl had an elevated rate of genetic mutation. Actually, the voles had shown no impact at all. “It was an important lesson in admitting error and coming to terms with our mistakes,” the chastened duo admitted later.
Those people who have returned to live in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone frequently tell outsiders how they now have to put up with an annoying profusion of wildlife. Leonid Petrovych reeled off the list to me as we sat outside Chernobyl village church: deer, wolves, wild boar, eagles, all confirmed in biodiversity studies by scientists. In a recent harsh winter the resurgent wolf packs had even killed and eaten some of the local domestic dogs and attacked a local man as he sat playing cards. The exclusion zone has now become a favored breeding area for white-tailed eagles, spotted eagles, eagle owls, cranes, and black storks, and in total 50 endangered species of birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians now inhabit the abandoned town of Prypiat and its environs. Recognizing the growing wildlife value of the zone, managers introduced 28 endangered Przhevalsky wild horses in 1998, and within six years their numbers had doubled. The conclusion is inescapable: Even the worst-case nuclear accident, scattering intense radiation over a wide area, is better for biodiversity in general than normal, everyday human habitation. “Without a permanent residence of humans for 20 years, the ecosystems around the Chernobyl site are now flourishing,” a 2006 scientific report published by the International Atomic Energy Agency concludes.54
Again, I am not suggesting that biodiversity has benefited from radiation, except as a result of its unintended consequence of reducing everyday human pressures on wildlife. Indeed, some scientists who have studied animal populations in the exclusion zone suggest that biodiversity is lower in areas where contamination levels are highest. Two ecologists, Tim Mousseau and Anders Møller, have published several papers reporting declines in biodiversity—from insects