Nuclear and Biodiversity - Revisited

A comment on a previous post has encouraged me to look at the impact of nuclear on biodiversity from a different angle. This will focus on the recent paper (Deryabina 2015) and how animals populations have shifted in the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl disaster. Surprisingly the number of elk, deer and wild boar in the Belarus exclusion zone are on a similar level to that in nearby nature reserves (Vaughan 2015). This would therefore directly oppose the intuitive beliefs that the continued radioactive exposure would cause nothing by damage to faunal communities.

Abundance of mammal species following the disaster in the exclusion zone. A clear increase in the early 90s following the removal of human activity (Deryabina 2015).

What this highlights is the fact that even the most drastic nuclear explosion does not impact wildlife as much as the everyday human actions such as agriculture. The exclusion zone has removed people; therefore this perhaps supports a “fortress approach” to biodiversity conservation (Hutton 2005). Where the total removal of humanity is essential for natural conditions to recover and prosper – a process supported by lion researcher  Craig Packer (Vidal 2015). The removal of humans was the catalyst for an unintentional rewilding programme (Howard 2007), with the dominance of pine and oak forests emerging (Chernobyl [WWW] 2015).

Professor Jim Smith claims that the industrial and agricultural developments in the area before the disaster probably meant that the population sizes were lower than the sizes experienced in the exclusion aftermath. There is even evidence for some species that were previously not present to have established themselves in the exclusion zone such as the European Bison and the Lynx (Vaughan 2015) – these may have been a product of human introduction, yet it does highlight the biodiversity carrying capacity of the area to have enhanced!

Elk within the Chernobyl exclusion zone (Vaughan 2015).

It would be wrong to say that the disaster was “positive” for wildlife, with evidence displaying the incredibly high radioactive levels within the first 6 months – 1 year to drastically negatively impact on wildlife health and fecundity (Deryabina 2015). However on the long term, positive points may be promoted with no significant declines in mammal density. This highlights wildlife’s incredible resilience to radiation, as well as illustarting the magnitude of damage that general human presence and development plays on wildlife.

Therefore critics of nuclear that claim that the threats to the environment are too high to risk, could arguably be dismissed as shortsighted. Focusing solely on nuclear energy, blind to the fact that the modern capitalist society itself is causing far more damage than the construction of a power plant ever could. This study helps put the risks into perspective.