Welcome

A team of inter­na­tional researchers has dis­cov­ered abun­dant pop­u­la­tions of wildlife at Cher­nobyl, the site of the 1986 nuclear acci­dent that released radioac­tive par­ti­cles into the envi­ron­ment and forced a mas­sive evac­u­a­tion of the human population.

In the jour­nal Cur­rent Biol­ogy issue of 5 Octo­ber, the researchers report the site looks more like a nature pre­serve than a dis­as­ter zone — abun­dant with moose, roe deer, wild boar and wolves — nearly 30 years after the world’s largest nuclear accident.

Pre­vi­ous stud­ies in the 4,200 km² Cher­nobyl Exclu­sion Zone showed evi­dence of major radi­a­tion effects and sig­nif­i­cantly reduced pop­u­la­tions of wildlife. For the first time since the Cher­nobyl acci­dent, researchers have long-​term cen­sus data that reveal thriv­ing wildlife pop­u­la­tions in the zone.

“Our data are a tes­ta­ment to the resiliency of wildlife when freed from direct human pres­sures such as habi­tat loss, frag­men­ta­tion and per­se­cu­tion,” added James Beasley, co-​author on the study, and assis­tant pro­fes­sor of wildlife ecol­ogy at the Uni­ver­sity of Geor­gia Savan­nah River Ecol­ogy Lab­o­ra­tory and the War­nell School Forestry and Nat­ural Resources. “The multi-​year data clearly show that a mul­ti­tude of wildlife species are abun­dant through­out the zone, regard­less of the level of radi­a­tion contamination.”

The study results show that the num­ber of moose, roe deer, red deer and wild boar liv­ing in the zone are sim­i­lar to num­bers in nearby uncon­t­a­m­i­nated nature reserves in the region.

Ani­mal abun­dances in the Cher­nobyl exclu­sion zone. (Top) Mean num­ber of track counts per 10 km (in 2008 – 2010) for elk and wolf plot­ted against mean 137Cs con­t­a­m­i­na­tion den­sity of each route. Analy­sis using lin­ear mixed mod­els includ­ing habi­tat vari­ables found no evi­dence of cor­re­la­tion between mam­mal den­sity and con­t­a­m­i­na­tion den­sity. (Bot­tom) Change in rel­a­tive abun­dance of three species in the 10 years after the Cher­nobyl acci­dent. (Deryabina, T.G. et al.; Long-​term cen­sus data reveal abun­dant wildlife pop­u­la­tions at Cher­nobyl; Cur­rent Biol­ogy , Vol­ume 25 , Issue 19 , R824 — R826; CC BY 4.0 license)

The cen­sus data on wolves in the area indi­cate they are seven times greater in num­ber than those liv­ing in the nearby reserves. Aer­ial cen­sus data col­lected from 1987 – 1996 reveal ris­ing num­bers of moose, roe deer and wild boar in the zone.

The study’s lead author, Tatiana Deryabina, a wildlife ecol­o­gist at Polessye State Radioe­co­log­i­cal Reserve in Belarus, said she has been “work­ing, study­ing and tak­ing pho­tos of the won­der­ful wildlife in the Cher­nobyl area for over 20 years, and I am very pleased our work is reach­ing an inter­na­tional sci­en­tific audience.”

(Source: Uni­ver­sity of Geor­gia news release, 05.10.2015)