"Calls for rescue of abandoned pets in Fukushima grow louder as time runs out"

The Mainichi Daily News of Japan has reported that a movement to rescue stranded pets and livestock in the evacuated (of humans, anyway) "no-go zone" around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant -- started by a single pet owner -- is growing as pets undoubtedly succumb to starvation. A veterinarian, who obtained special permission to enter the no-entry zone to investigate the state of livestock, went around feeding abandoned cats and dogs. The vet reported seeing abandoned pets everywhere, and that some dogs were found sitting waiting for their owners' return in front of their front door. Green Action Japan posted a YouTube video concerning pets left behind near Fukushima Daiichi in the earliest weeks of this catastrophe.

Dairy cattle in Fukushima sent to slaughterhouse over radiation fears

The Mainichi Daily News of Japan has reported that two of the 11 dairy farms in the Fukushima Prefecture town of Iitate -- 40 kilometers to the northwest, and directly downwind, of the leaking Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant -- have agreed to having their dairy cattle slaughtered due to radioactive contamination of the milk. However, other dairy farmers are trying to export their milk, if it tests below the government-established "permissible" level of radioactivity in milk. Meanwhile, Japanese t.v. broadcaster NHK has reported that the first radioactive contamination of livestock feed has been documented in Miyagi Prefecture, adjacent to Fukushima Prefecture. Levels of radioactive cesium five times the permissible limit were detected, prompting Miyagi Prefecture officials to urge farmers not to feed pasture grass to livestock, and not to put cattle out on pastures to graze.

Studies will look at radiation pathways in the ocean from Fukushima

Ken Buesseler, a chemical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution says that "when it comes to the oceans, the impact of Fukushima exceeds Chernobyl.” Buesseler has been awarded a rapid-response grant from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences to establish baseline concentrations of several radionuclides in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. He and colleagues will establish a baseline radionuclide data set for the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, using an east-to-west network of sampling stations where the ability to retrieve ocean water samples already exists. Chemical oceanographer Henrieta Dulaiova of the University of Hawaii, has also been awarded a grant to study the fallout in the oceans. Buesseler has made geochemical studies of the Black Sea using Chernobyl radio tracers and has looked at the behavior of fallout plutonium in seawater and groundwater.

And what of the animals? Livestock cannot be evacuated.

Fukushima Prefecture authorities say there were about three-hundred livestock farms with three-thousand cows, 30-thousand pigs, and 600-thousand chickens.  A veterinarian who inspected barns and chicken coops on April 22, before the area was designated off limits, says almost all the chickens had died. He says about 70 percent of the pigs at barns with automatic feeders were alive. But most pigs in other barns were dead.  Most of the beef cattle had been let out to graze, and were still alive. But about 60 percent of the dairy cows in barns had died. Source: Culture of Life News. WARNING: Video contains distressing footage.

Fukushima animals left to starve: May 10 first day rescue in zone allowed

Warning: Video contains distressing footage. It is in Japanese.