Eradication of Humans from Chernobyl Proved Beneficial for Wildlife in the Area

An global team of researchers monitored animal activity in the Polessye State Radioecological Reserve – the Belarus portion of the Chernobyl radiation zone – which covers roughly half of the entire exclusion area. Now it lies empty, apart from a few zone administrative personnel.

This does not mean that people can start moving back into Pripyat anytime soon since as there are still lethal levels of radiation coming from the plant, specifically around the area referred to as the Elephant’s Foot, which is now the center of a massive project costing billions of dollars created to enclose it within a giant sarcophagi.

Radiation levels after the explosion were said to be higher than the “Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings”.

The findings are rather hard to digest, suggesting that when it comes to what poses more threat to wildlife, a nuclear disaster is way lower on the list than human invasion.

Today wildlife scientists have published a letter in the Journal, Current Biology, which says that the “Chernobyl disaster area is home to a rich and varied wildlife community”.

And one researcher not involved with the study told New Scientist, “The striking Chernobyl findings reveal that nature can flourish if people will just leave it alone”, said Bill Laurance of James Cook University in Cairns, Australia. They include the Braslav Lakes National Park, Berezinsky Biosphere Reserve, Narochansky National Park, and Belovezhskaya Puscha National Park.

“The data that they have presented doesn’t actually show that the area is teeming with wildlife”, he said. They note that these increases came at a time when elk and wild boar populations were declining in other parts of the former Soviet Union.

The census data shows there are seven times as many wolves in the area than in nearby uncontaminated reserves, along with growing populations of other species.

“That natural life began expanding when people surrendered the region in 1986 is not weighty news”, Hinton, a radioecology master and co-creator on the paper, told The Washington Post. However, “What’s surprising here was the [wildlife] was able to increase even in an area that is among the most radioactively contaminated in the world”. Brown bears and rare European lynx – predatory cats the size of a Great Dane with tufted ears and glimmering gold eyes – quickly appeared in the forests, even though they hadn’t been seen for decades before the accident. Subsequent studies carried out in the 4,200 km2 Chernobyl Exclusion Zone showed that the radiation were still lingering and their effects were visible on the local wildlife. Now, almost thirty years after the accident, with billions of dollars spent, and dozens of lives lost, the entirely evacuated area around the plant-known as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone-has become an unexpected haven for wildlife.

Professor Jim Smith of Portsmouth University said: ‘We’re not saying radiation is good for animals, but human habitation of the landscape is worse’.