Chernobyl Anniversary: Humans Have Left, But Wildlife Is Thriving

Chernobyl is teeming with animals. What this proves is interesting---that humans are bigger dangers to animals than radiation.

It was 30 years ago on Tuesday that Chernobyl nuclear reactor blew up. It sent a radioactive cloud over Europe and forced 350,000 people here to resettle.

"Peace in absence of cars and tractors and an untouched forage base lets animals thrive," according to Yury Bondar, who supervises biological research in neighboring Belarus' Polesie State Radioecological Reserve. This had been created after the 1986 disaster.

There are as many wolves, elks and boars in the 19-mile-wide Chernobyl Exclusion Zone as in official wildlife reserves across Ukraine, says a 2015 study published in Current Biology.

In fact, there are more wolves here than those in Ukraine's official nature reserves. What does it indicate? Just that there is plenty for predators to feed on, said the study's coauthor Jim Beasley of the University of the Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory.

Even European bison, reintroduced into nearby Belarus after getting extinct in the wild have crossed in.

However, this region that houses the bison, wolf, wild horse and lots of other animals, will not be fit for human habitation for many more millennia, according to experts.

The human death in the area has been recorded to be about 5,000 according to the World Health Organisation, but a staggering 845,000 according to the Chernobyl Union of Ukraine website.

However, while animals too have been said to have been affected, scientists are not completely sure how much.

"Some effects on individual animals have been reported, but I have not seen any," said Beasley, who has conducted extensive field studies in Chernobyl. "On the surface a wolf from Chernobyl looks just like a wolf from outside it."

"There is no escaping the ionization of your cells," Bondar said. "But we lack studies and equipment to examine it properly."

Even though scientists are sure that animals are going to reach their threshold in future, the beasts are currently happy and sated.

"Removal of humans definitely did good for [animal] populations," Bondar added.