Worst Nuclear Disaster Site On Earth: Animals Returning

One of the world's worst nuclear disaster sites, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, has become more like a nature reserve area than a nuclear calamity after almost 30 years, according to a news release.

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, also known as the world's worst nuclear disaster site, has become a nature-attracted park, where it is swarming with roe deer, red deer, elk, wild boars and wolves, according to researchers.

When the power plant endured a fire along with an explosion in in 1986, thousands of people fled the area and never returned, after radioactive particles had dispersed everywhere, essentially making the area uninhabitable.

This new discovery is an essential factor regarding the resilience of wildlife, which may also reveal the essentials in understanding the long-term effects of the Fukushima disaster in Japan recently.

"It's very likely that wildlife numbers at Chernobyl are much higher than they were before the accident," said Jim Smith of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Portsmouth in the UK. "This doesn't mean radiation is good for wildlife, just that the effects of human habitation, including hunting, farming, and forestry, are a lot worse."

In previous studies in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the 4,200 square-kilometer area exhibited radiation effects, and it also showed a decline in the wildlife populations. However, the new evidence from a long-term survey revealed that mammal populations have returned.

"These unique data showing a wide range of animals thriving within miles of a major nuclear accident illustrate the resilience of wildlife populations when freed from the pressures of human habitation," said Jim Beasley, a study co-author at the University of Georgia.

The fluctuating numbers of roe deer, red deer, elk, wild boars in the area are quite similar to their numbers in four uncontaminated nature reserves in the region. The wolf population in the area is seven times bigger than those in nature reserves. In addition, helicopter survey data showed that there was a rising trend in the abundance of elk, roe deer and wild boar from one to 10 years after the accident.

"These results demonstrate for the first time that, regardless of potential radiation effects on individual animals, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone supports an abundant mammal community after nearly three decades of chronic radiation exposure," the researchers revealed., in a news release.

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