Wildlife thrives in desolate Chornobyl
It was the worst nuclear disaster in history, spewing thousands of tonnes of radioactive waste into the atmosphere and prompting the evacuation of more than 100,000 people.
But 30 years after its reactor number four exploded, the abandoned wasteland around the Chornobyl nuclear power station is one of the most important habitats for scientists studying native wildlife in Europe.
With humans off the scene, wild animals are roaming what is effectively one of Europe’s biggest, if unintentional, wildlife reserves. Wild boar, wolves, elk, and deer in particular have thrived in the forest and grassland landscape.
“Thirty years ago, two things happened at once. The whole area was contaminated with radiation, and the human population vanished,” said Dr, Mike Wood, a British naturalist. “That gives us a unique opportunity.”
Wood is one of a handful of UK scientists seeking to answer a provocative question: was the world’s worst nuclear accident less damaging to natural ecosystems than to humans?
The Chornobyl explosion, on Apr. 26, 1986, spread radioactive toxins across Europe, killing thousands through cancer and other radiation- related illnesses, and it still causes birth defects and illness in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.
The cloud of radioactive material released was so toxic that the area around the power station will be closed to human habitation for hundreds, possibly thousands, of years.
Within days almost the entire population of 120,000 people had been evacuated. They left a 4,500- square-kilometre area straddling the border of Ukraine and Belarus, including the 800- yearold town of Chornobyl, dozens of villages, and a top-secret Soviet military base.
But the “zone,” as it is popularly known, has become an improbable sanctuary for fauna, endangered bison and a growing population of Przewalski’s horses, a wild species introduced to the area in the 1990s.
“You could say that the overall effect was positive,” said Prof. Nick Beresford, an expert on Chornobyl, based at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Lancaster, England. “Radiation is a matter of increased potential risk. But when humans are around, animals are simply shot or lose their habitat.”
Wood and Beresford are running projects involving camera traps in three areas roughly reflecting high, medium and low contamination, and cross-checking captured images with other indicators of eco- system health such as animal droppings and soil samples.
Whether the wolves, horses and bison caught in the camera traps are healthy despite the radiation is as yet unknown, though there is little doubt that they do suffer in some way.
“We’re not saying that radiation is not as dangerous as we thought. Rather it is possible that in the absence of humans, the stress of radioactive contamination is a manageable one for wildlife populations,” said Wood.