Wildlife In Chernobyl 30 Years Later
Cover Letter
My motivation for this paper is to inform the reader about wildlife in Chernobyl 30 years later. The audience I will be reaching will be my instructor. After reviewing my peer’s responses and examining what I should change and keep, I have made numerous changes. My first revision was changing all of my citations to fit what you have listed. Next, I changed the first two paragraphs so I would have more of an actual introduction starting my paper with information about Chernobyl. “During a test run, the 4th reactor exerted too much power causing the 4th reactor to explode. ” I added this sentence in my introductory paragraph to give a little more information on Chernobyl to the audience. Throughout the paper I have taken out sentences and changed them to fit the context or to add more information if my peers and I did not think it fit. While the two classmates who reviewed my paper pretty much said only positive things, I took most of the revisions from what you had stated. I think that this is my best Final draft and I re-organized a lot throughout the paper to fit in more information and make sentences and paragraphs make more sense not only to me but hopefully to any audience that reads this paper. I feel as if all of the revisions improved my paper because it is a more developed paper than the original half-draft, I included a lot more information and developed my body with more information that helps the reader understand what exactly wildlife in Chernobyl is like.
Chernobyl’s Wildlife
To most people, Chernobyl was a tragic accident that led to the falling of a city. 4,000 lives were taken that day because of the radioactive explosion. During a test run, the 4th reactor exerted too much power causing the 4th reactor to explode. Chernobyl has been labeled an exclusion zone since and humans are not allowed in. People have gone into Chernobyl, and with the right authority like the researchers, they were able to go in for short amounts of time making sure they are not harmed by the levels of radiation. Scientists are also looking into the radiation impacting the animals and they are about 50/50 on how well these animals are doing. Wendle (2016).
The article that will be referenced is from National Geographic written by John Wendle titled Animals Rule Chernobyl Three Decades After Nuclear Disaster. This piece is an informative article conducted by researchers to see what wildlife is like currently in Chernobyl. Researchers traveled to Chernobyl and conducted a study on what type of animals are living, how many, and what they live like. The article is a cross-compilation of information gathered by multiple people and written by one. A majority of the article at hand includes information on animals that they have seen and what they reported. To people who are not as informed about Chernobyl, it is not like the movies or fiction side of media. Animals here don’t have 3 eyes or insane genetic mutations. While I can’t say this is never going to happen, the possibilities are pretty low compared to the data we have of the animals that have currently been through Chernobyl since the accident.
Despite John being told that he would be lucky to see or hear much, that statement was proven wrong quickly with cameras that had been previously set up and what the researchers
themselves saw when they traveled. Separate from the team that went to Chernobyl, a survey was conducted to see if animal life was active in a 5-week period “Camera traps captured images of a bison, 21 boars, nine badgers, 26 gray wolves, 60 raccoon dogs (an Asian species also called a tanuki), and 10 red foxes. ” Wendle (2016). This amount of animal life captured was just over a month of time which indicates that animals could have wandered through or stayed in this area or surrounding area for a decent amount of time. With the excessive amounts of some animals such as raccoon dogs, they could have possibly started re-populating in this exclusion zone slowly creating what they could call a new home.
Since the explosion Chernobyl is still a radioactive site, I think that animals will slowly die off over time, but that’s not the case at this moment in time and since the past. In 1998, a rare subspecies of horses called the Przewalski was introduced, at this time the subspecies were near extinction. When walking through Chernobyl, the author reported: “In a herd of wild Przewalski's horses, a rare and endangered subspecies of wild horse introduced to the preserve, I counted an adult male, two adult females, and two juveniles. ” Wendle (2016). Although the numbers are low, they have been reintroduced into other preserves as well in the last hope to re-populate a near-extinct subspecies. Doing so in different areas has allowed the Przewalski horses to be secluded from human interaction, over time these horses have had a small steady increase in population.
In order for Chernobyl to continue being a desolate home for animals, the animals have to rely on each other. Researchers stated: “We also saw the handiwork of beavers—everywhere. The growth of their populations in recent years may be one of the most important things to happen in the zone’s ecology. ” Wendle (2016). The ecosystem of Chernobyl had originally been destroyed but over time has taken a leap forward. The beavers have played a large role in the revival of the ecology by just being active in the environment. In order for an environment to thrive, you need an ecosystem and ecology. Chernobyl’s ecosystem at this point has been established for decent amount of time leaving the animals to finish the circle of life. As soon as the animals started interacting with each other and the environment as a whole, animal life currently has only seen positive impacts.
So, animal life in Chernobyl as of right now can only seem as if it’s a stock market graph slowly moving up. Currently, scientists can only assume it’s going to be fine until further research can be conducted on how the radiation affects these animals over long periods of time. Researcher and scientist Sergey Gaschak is one of the individuals who have dedicated their science life to Chernobyl. Shortly after the incident, a research lab was built for people like Sergey in a small town called Slavutych. The lab consists of other scientists and researchers who also dedicate their studies to Chernobyl. Sergey has worked in the exclusion zone for the past 30 years and states that “The wildlife population has grown dramatically…” Wendle (2016).
References
- Wendle, J. (2016, April 18). Animals Rule Chernobyl Three Decades After Nuclear Disaster.
- National Geographic. Retrieved from
- https://www. nationalgeographic. com/news/2016/04/060418-chernobyl-wildlife-thirty-year-anniversary-science/#close
