by Greg Mayer
From the BBC, a Radio Free Europe crew encountered a fox (Vulpes vulpes) in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, and gave it some bread and sausage. Click on the screenshot (not the arrow) to go to the video to see what it did; note that, cat-like, it uses its paw to help arrange the food for pick up by its mouth:
The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, part in the Ukraine and part in Byelorussia, was created after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. It is an area of 1000 mi² (2600 km²) from which all people have been removed due to the extensive radioactive contamination. The area has thus begun reverting to a wild state, and biologists and other scientists are let in for short periods to study the wildlife. The PBS Nature series had a fine film on the zone, Radioactive Wolves, a few years ago. Whatever the effects of the radiation, the absence of man has led to a recrudescence of the large mammal community.
The area has become home to wolves, lynx, wisent, true wild horses, red deer, boars, moose (= elk), roe deer, and the most recently proven inhabitants, brown bears,which were first documented last fall by Dr. Sergei Gaschak.
The CEZ is an unintentional, but, to my eye, quite successful, experiment in rewilding. It’s practically Pleistocene: all they need are woolly mammoths. And, according to some, they’re on the way!
Doesn’t everyone make sammys that way? A good doc on Chernobyl’s wildlife
https://youtu.be/mHiFn9hbbSw
I thought the fox was going to gag on that sandwich!
surprised the russians haven’t started hunting the bears in the CEZ. Their lust for bear gall is, well, galling. I have no idea what bullsh*t “traditional” or “natural” healing properties it’s supposed to have, but they’re almost as bad as the Chinese in slaughtering wild animals for bogus “cures”.
Here is something on conservation in east Russia. http://www.wcsrussia.org/
would be so nice to hear more good than bad conservation stories out of Russia (nice to hear good of any kind out of Russia, actually) but poverty, lack of education, remnant soviet exploitation mentality…but good at least to see the Wildlife Conservation Society fighting the good fight. Thanks for the link.
The question I have yet to see answered is how has the mutagenic effect of the radioactivity affected the wildlife–have new adaptive traits been found or have maladaptive mutations reduced the population of any particular species. From what I have seen, the animals seem to go about their business with little harm from the radioactivity
I’m curious, too.
(But too lazy to search for info…)
It should also be noted that animals in the wild have lifetimes a fraction of those of humans and members of their species in captivity.
It may be that most animals in the CEZ simply don’t live long enough, for the effects of long term radiation exposure at the levels found the the CEZ, to become apparent.
I’ve read/heard* that there are issues like poor survival rates, higher mortality, but that there is a high recruitment rate from outside the CEZ by young, migrant animals establishing new territories and nesting sites within the CEZ. Perhaps they will adapt/evolve a tolerance for the radioactivity, as I believe the madtom seems to have in the PCB-polluted Hudson River. No idea how the other fish dealt with it. I’m also reminded of Whit Gibbons, Herpetologist, professor emeritus at U. of Georgia on a tv program showing him studying the effects of radioactivity in turtles living downstream of nuclear power plants, but don’t recall any noticeable ill effects.
*sorry, I haven’t the references, but it was covered on NPR and in National Geographic, I think, and a book I read but I have no idea the title or the author.
A 2014 review of genetic and population studies of animals at both Chernobyl and Fukushima, by T.A. Mousseau and A.P. Moller in the Journal of Heredity, might be a place to start. Increased mutation rates have been documented in barn swallows at Chernobyl, for example. The authors of the review also mention “partial albinos” i.e. birds with white-spotted feathers, among the barn swallows at Chernobyl, as well as increased rates of sperm abnormalities.
Interesting, and thanks for the reference.
Is the fox a dad or mom? I think the fox is bring back food for kids.
Am at the moment listening to Frankie Laine sing “The Call of the Wild.”
I can’t believe the fox didn’t swallow that piece of meat on contact!
sub
Where are the green glowing animals? Obviously, radioactivity, just like evolution and global warming, is a myth spread by people who hate God.
Everyone knows mutants don’t glow in the dark. They have superpowers instead.
Fascinating, but I wouldn’t call it a sandwich; more, an assembly of what it was offered. The fox wisely simply loaded up everything that was placed in front of it, more or less in the order offered, so that it could pick it all up, and did so. Good for the fox, but anthropomorphizing (“sandwich”) doesn’t help; and I don’t think bread is a significant nutrient for vulpids.
Now, the other photos are truly interesting. I’m going to assume that there were always bears around, but they just hid themselves from people; but the wild horses strike me as something out of the ordinary.
You were expecting it to pull out the mayonnaise? 😀
I don’t think this was An Official Scientific Conclusion; just something caught by accident by a TV crew. Who were probably not canine nutritionists, either.
The tarpan would be a more geographically appropriate wild horse, but unfortunately they’re extinct. The Asian wild horse is a good substitute, I think. In his book “Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life,” George Monbiot considers the wild horse to be a poor candidate for reintroduction in the UK, but the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is of course a different environment, and probably more suitable.
That’s right. God forbid that science should get a reputation for having a bit of fun every now and then. It might catch on, scientists won’t be able to help themselves, it will infect all of their work and science will go straight to hell.
Clearly a Dagwood sandwich.
Back in school one day we had to do a debate exercise, pro and contra nuclear power plants. I was grouped with the pro’s, and argued exactly that: When they explode, you get fine wildlife reservations.
That may be the best possible pro argument. Well anticipated!
As was alluded to in a prior comment — beware of uncritically admiring the beautiful wildness of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Tim Mousseau (of U. South Carolina) has worked there extensively. I’ll quote a letter he sent to The Economist (28 September 2013) in response to a naive Chernobyl article:
“SIR – Professor Stephen Bondy perpetuated the myth that Chernobyl is a wildlife heaven (Letters, September 7th). The vast majority of peer-reviewed research shows that diversity of animals and plants is severely depressed in contaminated areas there. Animals generally do poorly with eyes with cataracts, substandard reproductive performance, dramatically reduced survival, slower growth rates and elevated frequencies of tumours.
Chernobyl is a wildlife heaven only in a biblical sense. It is not a paradise for the animals and plants inhabiting its contaminated lands.
Timothy Mousseau
University of South Carolina”