Scientists and researchers thought the damages to wildlife populations in the area would be long-lasting, but a paper published in Current Biology today suggests otherwise. Extensive field research and data collection carried out over a period of years by a team of international researchers indicates—for the first time—that numbers of mammalian species have bounced back in a big way despite nearly three decades of chronic radiation exposure. What’s more, coauthor Jim Smith of Portsmouth University in the UK says that “We’re pretty confident that before the accident, there weren’t these kinds of wildlife numbers in the zone.”
The study found that the relative abundances of moose, roe deer, red deer, and wild boar in the exclusion zone mimic those of four other uncontaminated reserves in the surrounding region in both Ukraine and Belarus. Populations of wolves are seven times higher than the surrounding reserves. The authors think that the abundant populations of prey species and the absence of humans attracted the large numbers of wolves from other areas. Smith adds that although some of these findings may seem surprising, they weren’t as surprising as you’d think. “What’s important to recognize is that in most of the exclusion zone, we’re down to very low dose rates” he says. So, “In some sense, we weren’t [surprised], because, we wouldn’t necessarily expect to see severe effects that would damage populations—we might expect to see effects on individual animals, but not on populations.”
