Some Unintended Consequences Are Good for Wildlife and You Won’t Believe This One #wildlife #chernobyl #nature

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Wild fox accepts a tourist’s handout

A few years ago I remarked on the strange fact that wildlife is better off living in a radiation/contamination area where there are no people, than sharing a clean habitat with us. Recent studies show that’s still true.

You may recall that, in 1986, explosions destroyed a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine, and released huge amounts of radioactive fallout. Residents were evacuated and a large exclusion zone created, where no one was allowed to live. Scientists have entered, and recently the area was opened to tourists. Wildlife viewing may be a good reason to travel there, because removing people created a de facto preserve.

Initial studies were depressing. The radiation killed trees, and deformed animals and birds were spotted. Animal populations dipped for a while. But recent studies find that many species have multiplied enormously. The list is impressive:

wolf,
badger,
wild boar,
roe deer,
red deer,
moose,
beaver,
white-tailed eagle,
black stork,
western marsh harrier,
short-eared owl,
and herds of European bison and Przewalski’s horse introduced since the accident to take advantage of this “involuntary park.”

With Chernobyl, the first thing people think about are mutations, [however] we have no evidence to support that this is happening. It is an interesting area of future research, but it is not something I would worry about.

The nuclear accident was a horror, but this aftermath holds hope. Nature can bounce back if we give her a chance.