Some nuclear advocates suggest that wildlife thrives in the highly-radioactive Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, animals like it, and not only that, a little radiation for anybody and everybody is harmless and maybe good, not bad. This may seem like a senseless argument to tackle were it not for the persistence of positive-plus commentary by nuke lovers. The public domain deserves better, more studied, more crucial answers.

Fortunately, as well as unfortunately, the world has two major real life archetypes of radiation’s impact on the ecosystem: Chernobyl and Fukushima. Chernobyl is a sealed-off 30klm restricted zone for the past 30 years because of high radiation levels. Whereas, PM Abe’s government in Japan has already started returning people to formerly restricted zones surrounding the ongoing Fukushima nuclear meltdown.

Conservationists and Indigenous communities share the aim of preserving biodiversity, even if their incentives differ. That creates a grim irony when tribal peoples are estranged from the environment they have safeguarded, for the sake of safeguarding the environment.

New research on how Indigenous communities in Papua province, Indonesia conserve the forest resources they rely on concludes, “The potential tragedy of the unseen sentinels is that so much may be lost simply because we failed to open our eyes to look.”