Where the Wild Things Are Undisturbed

wild geese in Korea's DMZ                                                                                          Korea Times

Here's an amazing assertion. It comes from environmental scientist and University of Portsmouth (UK) professor Jim Smith. Smith authored a recent study of the fauna living near Chernobyl, Ukraine, site of a massive nuclear accident in 1986. “We’re not saying the radiation levels are good for the animals," he says. "We know it damages their DNA, but human habitation and development of the land are worse for wildlife.” In fact, animals are living in all sorts of areas that humans, for one reason or another, have abandoned. Some are, like Chernobyl, just plain unhealthy, others are demilitarized zones, but all are No Man's Lands (http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-space-between.html). And where humans aren't, it seems, animals survive, even among the land mines and toxic waters we left behind: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151008-chernobyl-animals-thrive-without-people-science/