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Special showing in Gambrell Hall on April 27
USC naturalist Rudy Mancke will tour the site of the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in Ukraine in a special edition of S.C. ETV’s NatureScene that will air April 26.
The 7 p.m. show, which coincides with the 18th anniversary of the meltdown disaster, will be followed by a special edition of Stateline with Charles Bierbauer, dean of the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies; Bruce Coull, dean of the School of the Environment; and Mancke. A second viewing of the NatureScene Chernobyl show will be held in the 250-seat Gambrell Hall Auditorium at 6 p.m. April 27 with an open forum following.
“There have been other TV shows that have talked about the Chernobyl meltdown, but, to my knowledge, no one has ever done a natural history of that area,” said Mancke, who was NatureScene’s producer and on-camera naturalist for 23 years before joining USC’s School of the Environment in 2001. “We’ll look at the lay of the land, how wildlife and plant life have bounced back, and how humans are beginning to come back to the exclusion zone.”
The Stateline program, which will air on ETV at 7:30 p.m. April 26, will feature Bierbauer quizzing Coull and Mancke about the logistics of planning and videotaping the NatureScene segment. USC had established a relationship with Ukrainian officials several years ago, which eliminated much of the red tape of visiting the site and taking pictures.
Mancke, Coull, and other USC scientists have been conducting research at Chernobyl every year since 1998, often working with Ukrainian and Russian scientists to measure levels of radioactivity and to study how plants and wildlife have been affected by the disaster.
During the four days last spring that Mancke, Coull, and the ETV crew logged at Chernobyl, the weather was dry and hotter than normal. Everyone wore dosimeters to measure their exposure to radioactivity while they scouted the woods in and around the damaged nuclear reactor. Eighteen years after the meltdown, few obvious signs of damage are apparent.
“I couldn’t see any difference in the woods,” Mancke said. “I caught a snake, butterflies, and dragonflies. We saw signs of beavers and moose droppings. If you didn’t know what had happened, you couldn’t tell there had been a problem. But the devastation was horrific—mature trees died, and wildlife populations were decimated by the heat and massive radioactivity.
“If you ever wanted to be reminded of how the world can change in a few hours, this is it.”
While the USC team’s work has been scientific in focus, members also have provided humanitarian aid to older Ukrainian citizens—mostly widows—who have returned to their former homes in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl.
“We’ve brought food and supplies to them,” Mancke said. “To see these people come back to an area that was devastated by nuclear radiation just shows the amazing resilience of people and natural systems.”
03/04
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