BY DR. JOSE PALU-AY DACUDAO
(Why Chernobyl mammalian wildlife survive)
NOW the Chernobyl exclusion zone hosts one of the most diverse and densest population of wild mammals in Europe. How can they withstand the radioactivity?
I hypothesize that because of their relatively short natural life span compared to humans (only from two years to 10), most wild mammals do not have time to develop cancer, aplastic anemia, and other blood dyscrasias that are often the cause of death by radioactivity among humans.
The wild mammals of Chernobyl exclusion zone are born, mature, give birth to new offspring, all within 10 years, several times. They do not die of cancer and blood dyscrasias, because these haven’t had the time to manifest yet and make the ill. It would be interesting to put this hypothesis to the test by populating Chernobyl with long-lived mammals such as elephants.
Secondary plant growth will always cover such areas, usually in just few months. Remember that land plants evolved in very highly competitive ecological niches, and that an open space that has adequate water and sunlight attracts them like no other.
Humans would classify much of the initial growth as weeds and useless shrubs, but these will fill up such spaces whether we like it or not. Later, small trees start to take over. These secondary growths, even if not planted artificially, grow fast and dense, and thus are ravenous carbon dioxide gulpers.
Then again, all commercial cultivated croplands are essentially monocultures, with one plant (the cultivated one) dominating millions of hectares. Let’s be frank. Industrial agriculture feeds humanity. If these doomsayers want these croplands to go, they better destroy all these crops in their territories and starve to death.
We also noted in a previous article how the Haber-Bosch process has made the production of nitrogenous fertilizers possible in massive amounts, and cheaply too.
Just to give an example of how important nitrogenous fertilizers had become as the world population grows, the War of the Pacific between Chile versus a Bolivian-Peruvian alliance from 1879 to 1884 was fought over niter, and so is also known as the Nitrate War. It lasted four and a half years, with thousands killed on all sides.
These wars could only have gotten worse and worse if the growing world population just depended on naturally occurring minable nitrate minerals for fertilizers. The Haber-Bosch process has prevented more wars over nitrogenous fertilizers. In any case, fertilizer powered croplands have become ravenous gulpers of carbon dioxide.
It is true that most of their products eventually gets oxidized back into CO2 as we eat and catabolize them, and most of their non-woody parts biologically decompose quickly after harvest. But there are always remains of the harvested crops that get buried in anoxic conditions, or swept out into the sea and into anoxic sea bottoms, and these still represent a carbon sink, as their fixed carbon can’t get back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. (To be continued)/PN
