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Published online 27 November 2007 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2007.293
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Doubts over Chernobyl wildlife recovery
Ecologists argue over whether birds are thriving in exclusion zone.
An argument has erupted over the environmental health of the area surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear reactor that exploded catastrophically more than two decades ago.
Humans are still forbidden to live within 30 kilometres of the site of the 1986 accident, described as the worst environmental disaster of all time.
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If the wild-life does recover in Chernobyl (even if just faster than anticipated or with booming species), a perverse thought might be that non-natural disasters like this actually aid nature in its rehabilitation on the planet. It is well-known that natural disasters (storms, forest-fires, volcanic eruptions,...) are very potent 'fertilizers' of ecological systems. Certain human-induced disasters might just have the same effect? Should we start thinking of global warming as a good or a bad thing, then? Even if it would jeopardize our own species, it might just save earthly ecology ...