Unfortunately, where I live & work (Wolf Den Run State Park) in Appalachia the flora is terminally ill. Nearly every plant is invasive, and all indigenous trees are diseased, save for a few oaks & maples. Although this video is about radiation; I wish to share the miserable state of North American forests.
Moose in Europe is called Elk. When they came to the new world, they accidently called the big deer species elk. Another name for North America Elk is wapiti and truly the proper name.
I didn't realize you branched out into other areas. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on places such as Centralia, Pennsylvania or Picher, Oklahoma. While neither one is radioactive as Chernobyl is, both places suffered catastrophe and had to have their populations removed due to bad practices.
I do to the extent that there's a story in a protected area lol. I was really curious about the "nature reserve" angle for this story and how that interacts with the radioactivity the area experienced after Chernobyl. I've heard of Centralia, but not Pitcher. Both very unfortunate circumstances, absolutely.
I’m pretty sure the Ukrainian side of the exclusion zone is also a kind of radioactive national park full of wolves. Nature did a great episode on it back in the day.
I looked into this, but saw some conflicting information on a formally established "protected area" that was a separate entity outside of the Exclusion Zone itself. I'll take a look at that Nature episode and see if I can find anything out! I think a lot of the broad-level environmental impacts and rewilding would be pretty similar to what's seen at Polesie, if I had to guess.
Not all radiation is the same, of course. There's a big difference between internal and external sources, whether it's an alpha, beta or gamma emitter (or a combination thereof). With alpha emitters like the Cs-137 and Sr-90 isotopes that are largely left over from the Chornobyl Nuclear Plant disaster, you have to breathe in or consume these particles to let them have any significant effect. The other factor is concentration, as e.g. illustrated by the radioactive lead isotope that is commonly found in the soil. This isotope is part of the natural uranium-238 decay chain, but tobacco plants in particular have a preference for these isotopes, which concentrates them in their leaves. Then you have certain apes waddling past and use said leaves to burn while sucking the fumes into their lungs. Done over an extended period of time, this concentrates these lead isotopes and their decay products (e.g. polonium) in said ape's lungs and presto, you got a human ape with lung cancer due to long-term radiation exposure or lung emphysema or what have you. Studies done in the Chornobyl exclusion zone including in the Red Forest on burrowing rodents show a wildly different pattern of how radiation affects them. This demonstrates if anything how concentrating low doses affects them. Animals who consume mushrooms and kin, which tend to concentrate radioactive isotopes, such as boars have much higher levels of these isotopes in their bodies, while those who consume other foods come out much better. The aforementioned burrowing rodents for example showed virtually no ill effects in a recent study, despite literally digging into the soil of the Red Forest. We have to keep in mind here that the often quoted Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model for radiation exposure is essentially completely wrong, as the observed evidence on exposure symptoms does not corroborate this. I wasn't really aware of this zone in Belarus, to be frank, but I imagine that it much like the Chornobyl exclusion zone can teach us much about how radiation exposure works.
@@SofaKingShit Studies show that the body has a remarkable ability to recover from the abuse of tobacco smoking at least. Combine it with at least mild exercise each day and you should be able to enjoy tasting food for a long time to come :)
Another area you could cover (and this would be stretching nat'l park far, far, far more than radioactive exclusion zones) is the DMZ across the Korean peninsula. The wildlife there thrives because humanity had to abandon it. In that regard, itvis the same as the SRER in Belarus.
Moose and elk are a bit of a confusing subject in Norway, due to the names. Elg is their word for moose and Yort means elk. Also Deer means animal and Ro-deer is deer (not sure I spelled all those correctly) Anyway that's likely why you saw a mislabled moose.
Dyr, I believe it is spelled in Norsk, and I don't remember how they spell roe deer. Interestingly, "deer" in English used to mean "animal" like it dies still in Norwegian. Somehow, it came to mean that particular kind of animal in English. I don't remember from we derive the word "animal".
I'm glad! I don't get around to international parks _all_ that much, but I love talking about them and definitely plan to keep them in the rotation here on the channel!
I was thinking about the logging throughout the video because a tree can absorb radioactive material and still be 100 percent safe. Honestly having mildly radioactive wood shipped across the globe would help that land become safe. Having things made of wood is a key part of capturing carbon as if you let trees decay that carbon is continuing it's cycle. :)
I saw that someone commented on Pitcher & Centralia as well as your reply... so I'll expand on the idea to include Superfund sites that have been turned into city parks, playgrounds & athletic fields. I'm wary of their use as such and wonder if such sites should consider how Belarus has the right idea in at least setting aside the land for study. Maybe spend a few years monitoring the ecological impact before repurposing? Is it possible that testing at cleanup completion shouldn't be the last step? Could there be contaminates that show up later, whether because testing was limited by the current technological capabilities or because the chemicals etc were deeper than anticipated/expected and can work their way up. Not that I'd like an official Hot Zone NPS property, but could temporary Reserve-type designation come only from the Federal Govt? (Or maybe Cali if possible for statewide set-asides.) Edited to add: OMG I saw my name!
Hey Michaelle, those are super interesting ideas and examples. Definitely worth exploring. I came across quite a few Superfund and other toxic sites that have been turned into parks/protected areas now and I'm really interested in exploring these more at some point in the future. I'm also curious to know how suitable they are for park status, given the environmental damage they've sustained. One of the things I found out in researching this video wasn't necessarily the radiation being present at all, but the time you are exposed to it. So, living in the Exclusion Zone would be a no-go because you'd be exposed constantly, but for visiting (at least in low concentration areas), you should be okay. I haven't looked into this further, so this is just me speculating, but I wonder if the reason some of these places are suitable for park status is simply that park visitors are transient - they don't stick around for long periods of time. Either way, definitely a subject worth exploring!
(I Really think our best option for our Future, is Utilizing New Nuclear energy options) Just look at the "Ecuadorian Chevron Oil Spill in the Amazon." And how much it ruins the environment. That's just 1 reason why we should invest in modern advanced nuclear energy options. Small form reactors, LFTRs, Thorium Reactors, liquid reactors. Utilizing our advanced modern technology, engineering, material science. our greater understanding of safety measures and designs. More advanced computer technology, robotics, It will really allow any nation to be pretty much be energy independent. Less reliant on fossil fuels. They'll have efficient, stable electrical grids and the rest of the grid could experiment with alternative power sources, etc. We need to heal from the trauma of our past and see that it happened solely from Us not understanding what we were doing, not having advanced enough technology, material science, engineering, safety measures, understanding of how to go about everything, etc. This source of energy will greatly help the world improve towards the future and lowering emissions more than anything else could while having a very stable electrical grid system. Currently we have alternative energy options but the majority of our grid is powered off of fossil fuels and emission producing sources of energy. We will be so much better going forward commiting to modern advanced nuclear energy options.
"Currently we have alternative energy options" What are the alternative energy options? Solar? You need a lot more land than nuclear for solar. More land means destroying more of the environment because you need to build towns to put buildings in so you could put panels on roofs or you need to cut down forests or destroy deserts to build solar farms. If you cut down trees you affect biodiversity and nature goes crazy (see Yellowstone and the wolves). Trees help prevent flooding which would affect diseases (more common after floods), agriculture (crops could be lost because of flooding and that would lead to famine and poverty then death). Flooding would destroy rivers because ground pollution gets washed into rivers. Wind changes weather patterns (scientists want to use wind turbines to stop hurricanes) which affects ecosystems, agriculture and climate. And theres the issue of waste from solar and wind. Solar is ewaste which can lead to health problems for people in 3rd world countries who have to mine through the waste, theres expected to be 300x more compared to the nuclear waste created in the same amount of time. It would take Japan 19 yrs to recycle 10k tons of solar panels while France can recycle 1k-2k tons every year and an average of 6k tons of nuclear waste are created around the world every year. Wind is made of heavy duty plastic so its difficult to recycle so whats left of the blades that hasnt eroded (leaving plastic across the planet) gets left in landfills.
Nature is surprisingly well suited for handling radiation. Definitely it makes a impact but the animals and plants adapt thru many generations and reproduction until they balance out to a more manageable place for them to keep living pretty much normal life's. (We don't realize just how much pollution occurs from our other energy grid options. Petroleum, natural gas, methane, oil, coal, has its own side of environmental impacts. I feel like we can easily get hyper focused on "radiation" but if we respect it and handle it in our new more advanced ways of understanding it. Then radiation can benefit us more than anything else could.)
Yeah, I didn't either! I had heard about the "nature's return" aspect of Chernobyl, but didn't realize Belarus had a formal nature reserve to study its effects. Pretty cool!
Why wouldn't it be thriving, the radiation levels are well within safety limits even for people. Low-level radiation is actually good for you, we evolved as a species bathed in radiation.
It is thriving because humans stay out of. Animals who live in this area are pretty normal. It is long lived species like humans, that would suffer from the repeated damage of radiation. Yes there will be changes to DNA over the long period as there will be adaptation. The lack of humans is the main advantage for the local environment
Im curious to see how long these preserves last, and most interesting, if they last long enough that the increased mutation rate in the individuals in the reserve lead to a quickening speciation from populations outside the preserve. Especially for those species with little contact with other populations. Almost certainly still not on an individual human time scale, but maybe soon enough that descendants we might personally know, might someday know two distinct European Moose-Elk species. The regular Moose-Elks and the ones with lazers shooting from the eyes and 4 antlers...
It would only be a matter of time until we weaponize the laser moose lol. But, there was a study done on dogs recently which _possibly_ indicated rapid mutation/evolution rates due to radiation exposure. It's a preliminary study and many more are needed, but it does raise some interesting questions, like you mentioned. Here's a link to a Popular Mechanics article: www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a43457220/chernobyl-dogs-dna-evolution/ and the study itself: www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.ade2537
SUPER interesting! I've known about the Zone of Alienation in Ukraine, but I *didn't* know about the Belarusian side. Do European forests depend on fire the way western American ones do? If so, do you know what kind of management is being done (if any) to replace that part of the ecological cycle?
That's a great question and one I don't have the answer to, unfortunately. I didn't come across any indications that forests near Chernobyl were historically adapted to fire, at least not while researching the video, but that doesn't mean this isn't the case. This isn't my area of expertise, but just thinking off the top of my head here, I would think that the area around Chernobyl being wetter and having more hardwood species (compared to the Western US) would indicate it wasn't historically adapted to fire? Again, I'm not sure, but a very interesting question, and if anyone with expertise comes across this in the future, feel free to chime in!
"Radiation and life on earth are generally incompatible." Sorry, dude, but this is completely false. All of the life on earth is CONSTANTLY dealing with radiation. What's more, life would not exist at all without radiation. We rely on it totally. You need to get a basic understanding of radiation.
