The remarkable turnaround in the area, which was declared a permanent no-go zone for people after the accident in 1986, suggests radiation contamination is not hindering wildlife from breeding and thriving, but underscores the negative impact humans have on populations of wild mammals. Now it lies empty, apart from a few zone administrative personnel.
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The area now referred to as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is nearly entirely devoid of humans, but the population of wild animals in the area has boomed in the years since the disaster, according to a study published Monday in the journal Current Biology. More than 100,000 people were permanently evacuated from Chernobyl, and surrounding areas.
One such example of this surfaced in a paper published in Nature in 2014 which shows that the red coloration of bank voles has been diminished by high levels of radiation. Their abundance was compared with that seen between 2005 and 2010 in four uncontaminated nature reserves of similar size and habitat in Belarus.
In 1986, a nuclear accident caused widespread radiation throughout Chernobyl, which is located in Ukraine.
The Chernobyl nuclear power station was the site of a horrific disaster more than 26 years ago.
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.
Two of these reserves allow “limited hunting”. Data gathered by other research teams show that the soil near Chernobyl is still radioactive-and experts can only guess at what kind of molecular-level damage the radiation has inflicted on the zone’s burgeoning wildlife populations.
The Elk and the wild boar had been on the decrease before the disaster because former Soviet Union countries were experiencing “rural poverty and weakened wildlife management”. Despite the contaminated plant life, vegetation and trees, the area is showing promise with a significant increase in the wildlife population. 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.
“It shows I think that how much damage we do”, said fellow co-author Jim Smith, an environmental science professor at the University of Portsmouth.
The study’s lead author, Tatiana Deryabina, a wildlife ecologist at Polessye State Radioecological Reserve in Belarus, has been working, studying and taking photos of the wildlife in the Chernobyl area for over 20 years.
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Professor Timothy Mousseau, a biologist who was not part of the Chernobyl study said that it “doesn’t mean radiation is good for wildlife”.
