Radioactive boars on the rise in Germany
By VERENA SCHMITT-ROSCHMANN, Associated Press Writer
August 20, 2010 (AP) — It was a big shot. A big hog. And a big disappointment. When Georg van Bebber hauled back his wild boar from Ebersberg forest near Munich after a day of hunting, he was exhilarated about his impressive prey. But before he could take it home, a Geiger counter showed a problem: The boar’s meat was radioactive to an extent considered potentially dangerous for consumption. It needed to be thrown out and burnt. “I really would have liked to have this boar,” van Bebber said when he recounted the incident in a telephone interview from Bavaria. Almost a quarter century after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in Ukraine, its fallout is still a hot topic in some German regions, where thousands of boars shot by hunters still turn up with excessive levels of radioactivity. In fact, the numbers are higher than ever before. The total compensation the German government paid last year for the discarded contaminated meat shot up to a record sum of €425,000 (about $558,000), from only about €25,000 ten years ago, according to the Federal Environment Ministry in Berlin. “The reason is that there are more and more boars in Germany, and more are being shot and hunted, that is why more contaminated meat turns up,” spokesman Thomas Hagbeck told The Associated Press. “But this also shows how long radioactive fallout remains a problem in the environment,” he said. Boars are among the species most susceptible to long-term consequences of the nuclear catastrophe 24 years ago. Unlike other wild game, boars often feed on mushrooms and truffles which tend to store radioactivity and they plow through the contaminated soil with their snouts, experts say. … In fact, the Cesium from the Chernobyl fallout is moving further into the ground and has now reached exactly the layer where the boars’ favorite truffles grow, the Hunting Association’s Reinwald said. Therefore, the season for such truffles – a variety not eaten by humans – usually means a rising number of radioactive boars.
