November 2019 LSAT Section 2 Question 12

After the disastrous 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, the surrounding area was contaminated with radiati...

ankita96 on July 31, 2020

Ans Choice B

Hi, i was a bit confused between d and b , although i chose d, could you tell me why B would wrong. If they were migratory and didnt get much exposure would it not also help explaining. I eliminated the answer choice because I thought Migratory birds would not help to expand the wildlife per se. Could you explain if my reasoning is accurate. Thank you in advance!

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shunhe on July 31, 2020

Hi @ankita96,

Thanks for the question! So the answer to this question isn’t (D) or (B), it should be (E). Let’s walk through the stimulus first. We’re told that after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, the surrounding area was contaminated with radiation. So the wild animals there now have very high levels of radiation in their muscles and bones. But, despite this, wildlife populations have expanded rapidly!

So we’re asked for something that’ll help us resolve this apparent discrepancy; in other words, it’s a resolve the paradox question. And what’s the puzzle we are trying to solve, what are we trying to explain? The fact that these animals have high levels of radiation, but their populations are expanding!

So first take a look at (B), which tells us that some of the species are migratory and only live in the region part of the year, so their radiation exposure is still limited. Does this help explain the puzzle? No, because we’re told that the animals have very high levels of radiation! So maybe they’d have super high levels of radiation (or be dead) if they weren’t migratory, but that doesn’t change the fact that there’s very high levels of radiation now, and that’s what we’re trying to explain. So (B) doesn’t help us understand how the populations could expand with high levels of radiation in them, and so (B) is wrong.

(D) tells us that while some of the radioactive chemicals depress fertility in local birds, some don’t. Does this explain this paradox? No, it doesn’t. First of all, it basically tells us that there’s at least one chemical out there that doesn’t depress fertility (since “some” on the LSAT means at least one). But some do, so why aren’t those making the populations go down? Second of all, (D) only applies to “local birds,” whereas we’re concerned about “wildlife populations,” which presumably has more than just birds in it. So (D) is also too narrow, and for both of these reasons, it doesn’t help resolve the discrepancy.

(E), on the other hand, tells us that the threat of radiation made people go away, which opened up new habitat for wildlife and also got rid of hunters. Well, this would help explain the paradox! Sure, maybe some animals died from radiation or were worse off, but overall, people leaving the area and not hunting the wildlife allowed the populations to expand. This fully explains the discrepancy above, and so is the correct answer choice.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.

ankita96 on August 6, 2020

Oh yeah my bad, the answer is E. Okay thank you this was helpful!