Chernobyl Wildlife Forty Years On

1) It is always interesting with nuclear articles to separate the language from the actual measure of harm. On the one hand we have the "abandoned, irradiated landscape of Chernobyl... not far from the ruins of the power plant at the centre of the world's worst nuclear disaster". On the other hand we have all these animals who, being unable to read and forced to rely on observable harm, think the situation is pretty good.

This article is actually much better than most because it links a study that talks about the actual levels of radiation around Chernobyl, but the amount of legwork these reporters make people do to try and figure out the "so what?" of the thing is remarkably lazy. It baffles me how fearful people get without being at all worried about whether there is an observable problem.

> For years, researchers have documented weird, twisted trees, swallows troubled by tumours and even an eerie black fungus that lives inside the radioactive ruins of the reactor building itself.

I mean, y'know, oh no! Outside the Chernobyl exclusion zone I can't imagine encountering a twisted tree or a cancerous swallow. How big an issue are we talking? Are they going to make me spend my afternoon reading papers? Are these swallows helpful enough to live only in the irradiated areas for us or are these swallows migratory? What's their air-speed velocity?

2) This is one of the few places on earth where these animals are safe from the #1 apex predator that is actively ... I don't know what the next one up from genocide is, lets say ... speciescidal. I'd expect wild mutations since the most important evolutionary pressure in the rest of the world isn't present. While evolution due to radiation is possible it is going to be quite challenging to tease that out. Evolution due to human irrationality creating an animal sanctuary seems more likely.