[ RadSafe ] " Chernobyl wildlife baffles biologists "

Fri Jun 8 11:33:37 CDT 2007

For Mr. Mousseau to make his case he needs to study the populations of barn swallow at nearby operating nuclear and non-nuclear power plants.  I'll bet a soda that if he did he would find that the overall population at Chernobyl is larger, perhaps much larger, than at any facility where the maintenance department is charge with destroying the nests so there isn't unsightly bird poop.  I suspect that if Mr. Mousseau studied adult rather than nestlings swallows he would have found few if any abnormalities that affected the bird's ability to fly, eat, etc., as swallows are low enough on the food chain that the Circle of Life spins rather rapidly for them.

I actually don't have any problem believing that birds that nest in the highest radiation areas, such as inside the sarcophagus, have lower survival rates than those that nest miles away.  Even so, I suspect that the number of nestlings that fledge from the sarcophagus area is much higher than the number fledging from inside a an operating coal-fired power plant.

I would love to see more research done on wildlife in the Chernobyl area, but I think that the final conclusion is already evident, and agrees with what we see at places like Hanford:  wildlife can co-exist with the contamination that keeps people away better than it can co-exist with people.

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl] On Behalf Of Franta, Jaroslav
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2007 6:58 AM
To: Radsafe (E-mail)
Subject: [ RadSafe ] " Chernobyl wildlife baffles biologists "

Chernobyl wildlife baffles biologists;
Animals are returning to area near meltdown, but scientists are split on their long-term fates Toronto Star, 8 June 2007 Douglas Birch, Associated Press

PARISHEV, Ukraine -- Two decades after an explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant sent clouds of radioactive particles drifting over the fields near her home, Maria Urupa says the wilderness is encroaching. 

Packs of wolves have eaten two of her dogs, the 73-year-old says, and wild boar trample through her cornfield. And she says fox, rabbits and snakes infest the meadows near her tumbledown cottage. 

The return of wildlife to the region near the world's worst nuclear power accident is an apparent paradox that biologists are trying to measure and understand. 

Many assumed the 1986 meltdown of one reactor, and the release of hundreds of tonnes of radioactive material, would turn much of the 2,850 square-kilometre evacuated area around Chernobyl into a nuclear dead zone. 

It certainly doesn't look like one today. 

Wildlife has returned despite radiation levels in much of the evacuated zone that remain 10 to 100 times higher than background levels, according to a
2005 UN report - though they have fallen significantly since the accident. 

Some researchers insist that by halting the destruction of habitat, the Chernobyl disaster helped wildlife flourish. Others say animals may be filtering into the zone, but they appear to suffer malformations and other ills. 

Biologist Robert Baker of Texas Tech University was one of the first Western scientists to report that Chernobyl had become a wildlife haven. He 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 a high proportion of the birds he and his colleagues have examined suffer from radiation-induced sickness and genetic damage. Survival rates are dramatically lower for those living in the most contaminated areas. 

Their disagreement reflects a deeper split among biologists who study exposure to radiation. 

Some, including Baker, think organisms can cope with the destructive effects of radiation up to a point - beyond which they begin to suffer irreparable damage. Others believe that even low doses of radiation can trigger cancers and other illnesses. 

In the Journal of Mammology in 1996, Baker and his colleagues reported that the disaster had not reduced either the diversity or abundance of a dozen species of rodents near the Chernobyl plant. 
Genetic tests showed Chernobyl's animals suffered some damage to their DNA, Baker and his colleagues reported. But they said overall it didn't seem to hurt wildlife populations. 

Mousseau and others paint a far more pessimistic picture. 
In the March issue of the journal Biology Letters, a group led by Anders Moller, from Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, said that in a study of 7,700 birds examined since 1991, they found 11 rare or unknown abnormalities in a population of Chernobyl's barn swallows. 
Roughly one-third of 248 Chernobyl nestlings studied were found to have ill-formed beaks, albino feathers, bent tail feathers and other malformations. Mousseau was a co-author of the report. 
In other studies, Mousseau and his colleagues have found increased genetic damage, reduced reproductive rates and what he calls "dramatically" higher mortality rates for birds living near Chernobyl. 
The work suggests, he said, that Chernobyl is a "sink" where animals migrate but rapidly die off. 
Mousseau suspects that relatively low-level radiation reduces the level of antioxidants in the blood, which can lead to cell damage.
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Can anyone pls. comment on the Mousseau reports ? (Thnx)

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