Quote:
Originally Posted by Amaranthus
The Chernobyl exclusion zone is flourishing with wildlife, including supporting populations of large vertebrate predators and herbivores that are absent from most of the Ukraine. Where people aren't, megafauna are...
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Hi Barry,
However, as Timothy Mousseau, Professor of Biological Sciences at
the University of South Carolina, told listeners on ABC Radio National on
Tuesday morning, there are two perspectives to this.
He pointed out there is a fence around the exclusion zone and within
it there are large areas that are relatively uncontaminated. However,
there are also very large areas of high contamination. When you go to the
relatively clean areas everything looks normal and there are normal numbers
of animals. If you were sitting around in that area you would think
it is a wonderful place for animals. There is no hunting, there are no people.
But if you go to the radioactive areas and perform rigorous scientific
experiments and then compare the results to the clean areas, then it
is clear that there are very strong effects on the organisms that live there.
That interview with Phillip Adams here -
https://radio.abc.net.au/programitem...yXp7?play=true
In the most radiated areas, Mousseau states, up to 40% of male birds were
found to be completely sterile.
"Genetic and Ecological Studies of Animals in Chernobyl and Fukushima"
by Mousseau and Moller -
http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/con....full.pdf+html