Contaminated Canids in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

This photo essay takes place in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone – the site of the nuclear disaster that occurred at 1.23am on April 26th, 1986 that led to the permanent evacuation of around 1,000 square miles in Ukraine and 835 square miles in Belarus. The focus of the series is on the lives of the dogs that live amidst the toxic remnants of the disaster, including Strontium-90 and Caesium-137 amongst other non-radioactive toxics. The series documents the unexpected human-animal relations and more-than-human geographies of care that emerge in toxic places and accompany Chernobyl’s toxic legacy.

Photographs taken in 2019 and 2020 are overlain with black and white images that depict scenes from before and during the nuclear accident. This technique signals that these otherwise ordinary photographs were taken in Chernobyl and serves as a reminder of how toxic legacies will haunt ecosystems for generations to come. Moreover, it highlights how the invisibility of toxics, like radiation, and their lingering presence in the landscape require cultural markings to make people aware of their presence (Alexis-Martin and Davies, 2017). Nonhuman animals, however, do not read our warning signs, nor do they adhere to the boundaries and borders we draw in the landscape, political or otherwise. They are unable to avoid these spaces and are often the ones left to dwell in the toxic ruins left behind by industry and industrial accidents.

As such, in the wake of humanity’s exodus, Chernobyl has emerged as one of Europe’s largest truly wild spaces, is home to a range of rare species, and is the site of an international rewilding experiment. The effects of radiation on individuals, populations and ecologies, however, remain relatively understudied in field settings. Chernobyl has therefore become a ‘natural laboratory’ for scientists undertaking radioecological and radiobiological research. The scientific community at Chernobyl, however, is in disagreement as to the effects of radiation on the Zone’s ecology. A long-standing scientific controversy regarding the effects of radiation on Chernobyl’s wildlife is very much ongoing (Beresford et al., 2020). One side depicting the Zone as a thriving ecosystem, whilst the other points to negative effects of radiation at a range of ecological scales.

In this context, the photo essay challenges conceptualisations of Chernobyl as either a ‘wasteland’ or an ‘apocalyptic Eden’ by telling the story of the dogs (and wolves) that call Chernobyl home, the challenges they face in their daily lives, and the sorts of care they receive from the humans they co-habit the space with. As such, a more-than-human approach to studying instances of ‘slow violence’ is advocated (Nixon, 2011) to illuminate the everyday practices that endure amidst toxic ruins.

More broadly, the scientific controversy at Chernobyl and the human-animal relations in the Zone disrupt and de-familiarise understandings of ‘Nature’ as something pristine and free from human influence. It is hoped that taking seriously nature at Chernobyl as both thriving and in need of maintenance might help in reorienting environmentalism towards ontologies of Nature more aptly aligned with the shifting ecological baselines that emerge as a consequence of human activity, whilst also prompting a rethinking of toxicity itself to account for its ubiquity in Anthropocene ecologies.

Photographs were taken during fieldwork in the Zone with a US-based NGO – the Clean Futures Fund (CFF) – that research, care for, and adopt some of the dogs from the Zone to the US. All photographs were taken by the author, apart from the cover photo in which the author features, which was taken by Rita Gasanova. The photo edits were done by Ukrainian artist, photographer and designer, Karolina Uskakovych.

References

Alexis-Martin, B. and Davies, T. (2017) Towards nuclear geography: Zones, bodies, and communities. Geography Compass, 11(9): 1–13.

Beresford, N.A., Horemans, N., Copplestone, D., Raines, K.E., Orizaola, G., Wood, M.D.,  Laanen, P., Whitehead, H.C., Burrows, J.E., Tinsley, M.C., Smith, J.T., Bonzom, J.-M., Gagnaire, B., Adam-Guillermin, C., Gashchak, S., Jha, A.N., de Menezes, A., Willey, N. and Spurgeon, D. (2019) Towards solving a scientific controversy – The effects of ionising radiation on the environment. Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, 211: 106033.

Nixon, R. (2011) Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. London: Harvard University Press.

Background Photo Source: Vadim Mouchkin, IAEA Imagebank - 04710018.

Edited by Karolina Uskakovych.