(Why Chernobyl mammalian wildlife survive)
THE EXTENT to which some indoctrinated people will go in order to protect their narrative, which often also makes up their source of income, that everything humans do will doom our planet is designed to sock the overly sensitive reader to starry-eyed insensibility and sheepishness.
Such articles claim, that the main reason for global greening is that China and India are planting more crops and trees. Only two counters responsible for all the greening going on in the whole wide world?
It totally ignores that significant greening is also occurring in the drier areas of inland northwest Eurasia, western north America, and northern Africa, and even in the oceans. In any case, if China and India are planting more trees, these trees, monoculture or not, still represent a carbon sink if the trees and their products don’t get burned or biologically decomposed (as we’ve discussed repeatedly above).
Such articles claim that tree plantations are monocultures and so poor in biodiversity. It’s a typical strawman argument that has nothing to do with the fact that a single species planted over millions of hectares will still gulp down carbon dioxide and fix it in their woody bodies; and unless burned or biologically decomposed, they represent a carbon sink.
This argument is another topic, and advocates that we humans should promote and preserve biodiversity. I agree.
As explained previously I am much for the preservation of the primary forests of the world, but NOT because they are as effective carbon sinks as fast-growing ravenous CO2 gulpers that secondary woody growths always are.
Also note that in tropical rain forest zones and in other areas where there is adequate rainfall, the surface land always greens up even after a fire or a deforestation event. This is true whether or not the scalped land is reforested artificially or not.
Even radioactive areas, such as in Chernobyl experience this new plant growth. Towns and communities are now abandoned around the blown-up nuclear plant are now overgrown by new growth and have greened up.
For biodiversity advocates such as myself, I am much pleased that many species of mammals that have been locally extinct for centuries have moved in the Chernobyl refugium, ultimately supported by the rich new plant growth, and the absence of human hunters and disturbance.
Why is it relatively safe for mammals other than humans to repopulate a radioactive area?
When Chernobyl exploded, almost all mammals died within two weeks, notably of hypothyroidism. Radioactive iodine get into their thyroids and cooked these glands. These secrete thyroid hormones essential to life. (Thus patients are recommended to take potassium iodide pills in order to saturate the thyroid with stable iodine and exclude radioactive iodine from getting in.)
Afterwards, in spite of high radioactive strontium (especially dangerous because it mics calcium and is absorbed by mammals into their bones) and cesium levels, mammalian wildlife immigrated in. (To be continued)/PN
