This image was taken at makeshift veterinary centre in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone setup by the Clean Futures Fund (CFF), a US-based NGO that cares for and controls the dog population in the Zone. Here, two volunteers scan the dogs for radiation as it enters the clinic. They are checking to see whether the dog has any exterior radioactive contaminants in its fur or on its paws that might provide a threat to the veterinarians and volunteers working with the dogs, and to the dog itself.
The background image, which depicts doctors that treat causalities of the disaster in 1986, highlights how the Zone has in some sense shifted from a human tragedy from which humans had to be evacuated to a place in which animals are now the ones that experience the toxic legacy, and are now in need of rescue. The latter narrative is now played out through the adoption programme that the CFF runs, which adopts dogs from the Zone to ‘forever homes’ in the US.
A biologist working in the Zone told me that the dog featured in the image is suspected to be a cross between a domestic dog and a Golden Jackal. It lives at the forestry centre in the Zone where a small number of locals work and live. When brought to the clinic, the CFF’s veterinarians were instructed not to spay her by the locals she lived with. The locals viewed the dog as their companion and were wary of foreigners coming in and performing operations on her, although they allowed her to be taken to the surgery for vaccinations overnight.
A number of other instances like this occurred, where locals would not allow dogs to be taken by the CFF for treatment, would actively free dogs from traps, and would cut off ear tags fitted to monitor radiation exposure. These differences in opinion as to how the dogs should be managed and who they belong to create problems for anyone seeking to manage the population of dogs living in the Zone. Without sterilising a certain proportion of animals, a spay/neuter campaign will not have the desired outcome of reducing the population over time, so these conflicts must be managed if a successful population management campaign is to be run.
The contentious biopolitics at work can be framed in terms of which animals are deemed to belong in spaces of toxicity and by whom. For foreign donors and volunteers, a place like Chernobyl is not an appropriate living space for domestic dogs. Public perceptions of Chernobyl as a toxic landscape, its associations with mutant life, and the threat from wolves make it a place from which the dogs need to be rescued. But for locals who live and work in the Zone, it is reasonable to have dogs around as pets or free-roaming dogs for companionship. This public perception overlooks the reality of some of dogs’ lives in Chernobyl, which occupy a spectrum from those that are kept indoors as typically domesticated pets, to dogs that live outside but are looked after by workers, to the truly free-roaming animals that search for food on their own.
In this context, foreign volunteers that come to care for dogs were sometimes met by local residents with confusion – why had they travelled so far to spay and neuter these specific dogs? – and occasionally, disdain – why are they offering more support to dogs than people? The majority of local people, however, were happy to see the dogs being taken care of but the resistance offered by a small number of locals demonstrates the complexity of working with more-than-human communities in toxic places. The CFF works extensively with the human communities affected by the Chernobyl disaster, including workers and children alongside the Dogs of Chernobyl project, so aren’t seen as privileging either animals or humans over each other.
This image was taken at makeshift veterinary centre in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone setup by the Clean Futures Fund (CFF), a US-based NGO that cares for and controls the dog population in the Zone. Here, two volunteers scan the dogs for radiation as it enters the clinic. They are checking to see whether the dog has any exterior radioactive contaminants in its fur or on its paws that might provide a threat to the veterinarians and volunteers working with the dogs, and to the dog itself.
The background image, which depicts doctors that treat causalities of the disaster in 1986, highlights how the Zone has in some sense shifted from a human tragedy from which humans had to be evacuated to a place in which animals are now the ones that experience the toxic legacy, and are now in need of rescue. The latter narrative is now played out through the adoption programme that the CFF runs, which adopts dogs from the Zone to ‘forever homes’ in the US.
A biologist working in the Zone told me that the dog featured in the image is suspected to be a cross between a domestic dog and a Golden Jackal. It lives at the forestry centre in the Zone where a small number of locals work and live. When brought to the clinic, the CFF’s veterinarians were instructed not to spay her by the locals she lived with. The locals viewed the dog as their companion and were wary of foreigners coming in and performing operations on her, although they allowed her to be taken to the surgery for vaccinations overnight.
A number of other instances like this occurred, where locals would not allow dogs to be taken by the CFF for treatment, would actively free dogs from traps, and would cut off ear tags fitted to monitor radiation exposure. These differences in opinion as to how the dogs should be managed and who they belong to create problems for anyone seeking to manage the population of dogs living in the Zone. Without sterilising a certain proportion of animals, a spay/neuter campaign will not have the desired outcome of reducing the population over time, so these conflicts must be managed if a successful population management campaign is to be run.
The contentious biopolitics at work can be framed in terms of which animals are deemed to belong in spaces of toxicity and by whom. For foreign donors and volunteers, a place like Chernobyl is not an appropriate living space for domestic dogs. Public perceptions of Chernobyl as a toxic landscape, its associations with mutant life, and the threat from wolves make it a place from which the dogs need to be rescued. But for locals who live and work in the Zone, it is reasonable to have dogs around as pets or free-roaming dogs for companionship. This public perception overlooks the reality of some of dogs’ lives in Chernobyl, which occupy a spectrum from those that are kept indoors as typically domesticated pets, to dogs that live outside but are looked after by workers, to the truly free-roaming animals that search for food on their own.
In this context, foreign volunteers that come to care for dogs were sometimes met by local residents with confusion – why had they travelled so far to spay and neuter these specific dogs? – and occasionally, disdain – why are they offering more support to dogs than people? The majority of local people, however, were happy to see the dogs being taken care of but the resistance offered by a small number of locals demonstrates the complexity of working with more-than-human communities in toxic places. The CFF works extensively with the human communities affected by the Chernobyl disaster, including workers and children alongside the Dogs of Chernobyl project, so aren’t seen as privileging either animals or humans over each other.