Chernobyl 28 Years Later

[longknife]

I encountered a story on Feedly Politics showing photos of the site this long after the nuclear meltdown. (Wild)Life In A Nuclear Wasteland: 28 Years After the Chernobyl Disaster @ (Wild)Life In A Nuclear Wasteland: 28 Years After the Chernobyl Disaster only showed drab and dreary photos like this:

But then, I got to thinking. If the humans are gone, what about the flora and fauna? How are they doing? Filled with three-eyed animals and strangely formed plant life?

So, here's but one result of a search:

And there are other sites @ wildlife around Chernobyl today on Bing.com

 

[longknife]

Then, there's this article:

Chernobyl's birds adapting to ionizing radiation

Date: April 24, 2014
Source: British Ecological Society (BES)
Summary:
Birds in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl are adapting to -- and may even be benefiting from -- long-term exposure to radiation, ecologists have found. The study is the first evidence that wild animals adapt to ionizing radiation, and the first to show that birds which produce most pheomelanin, a pigment in feathers, have greatest problems coping with radiation exposure.

Read @ Chernobyl's birds adapting to ionizing radiation -- ScienceDaily

 

[waltky]

Wildlife recovers from Chernobyl accident...

Wildlife ‘Abundant’ in Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
April 19, 2016 - A study by an American university of wildlife in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) confirms that animals are “abundant” in the area.

The zone was created in the aftermath of the April 26, 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Pripyat, Ukraine. While other studies had pointed to thriving wildlife, they based their assessment on animal tracks. This study involved using 30 cameras over 94 sites. Researchers also used a “fatty acid scent” to attract animals to the cameras.

The cameras were placed far enough apart to prevent animals from coming to more than one over a 24-hour period. "The earlier study shed light on the status of wildlife populations in the CEZ, but we still needed to back that up," said James Beasley, an assistant professor with the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. "For this study we deployed cameras in a systematic way across the entire Belarus section of the CEZ and captured photographic evidence--strong evidence--because these are pictures that everyone can see," said Beasley, the study's lead author.

A pack of wolves visits a scent station in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The photograph was taken by one of the remote camera stations and was triggered by the wolves' movement.​

The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is about 2,160 square kilometers in size and covers parts of Ukraine and Belarus. Researchers say radiation levels “vary significantly” throughout the region. The researchers found that “animal distribution is not influenced by radiation levels.” Over the five-week period of the study, researchers say they observed 14 species of mammals, including gray wolves, the wild or Eurasian boar, red foxes and the raccoon dog,”a canid species found in East Asia and Europe.”

All of the species were seen at camera stations “close to or within the most highly contaminated areas,” researchers said. "We didn't find any evidence to support the idea that populations are suppressed in highly contaminated areas," Beasley said. "What we did find was these animals were more likely to be found in areas of preferred habitat that have the things they need - food and water." The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. The Chernobyl explosion released 400 times more radiation than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. It sent a cloud of radioactive fallout into Russia, Belarus and over a large portion of northern Europe.

Wildlife ‘Abundant’ in Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

 

[Skull Pilot]

There have been people living in the exclusion zone for years

 

[longknife]

An endangered species