Many people think the area around the Chernobyl nuclear plant is a place of post-apocalyptic desolation. But more than 30 years after one of the facility’s reactors exploded, sparking the worst nuclear accident in human history, science tells us something very different.
Researchers have found the land surrounding the plant, which has been largely off limits to humans for three decades, has become a haven for wildlife, with lynx, bison, deer and other animals roaming through thick forests. This so-called Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), which covers 2,800 square km of northern Ukraine, now represents the third-largest nature reserve in mainland Europe and has become an iconic – if accidental – experiment in rewilding.
“The CEZ is a fascinating example of nature’s power to rebound from degradation,” says Tim Christophersen, head of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP’s) Nature for Climate Branch.
UNEP is working with Ukraine’s Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources and the State Agency on the CEZ to support that renaissance. A six-year project, launched in 2015 and funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), titled Conserving, Enhancing and Managing Carbon Stocks and Biodiversity in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, has helped establish a national biosphere reserve around Chernobyl, says UNEP coordinator for Europe Mahir Aliyev, who is managing the project.
Teams have worked closely with the Polesskiy Radiological Reserve in neighbouring Belarus, which was also affected by the Chernobyl disaster, creating a transboundary protected area. “Both reserves will allow natural forest to help cleanse contaminated land and waterways,” says Aliyev.
In the spring of 1986, Chernobyl’s #4 reactor caught fire and exploded, sending a plume of radiation into the atmosphere. The disaster forced more than 100,000 people from their homes. A 30-kilometre exclusion zone was created around the reactor leaving two large towns, as well as more than 100 villages and farms, empty.
But most of the radioactivity released from the reactor decayed rapidly. Within a month, only a few per cent of the initial contamination remained and after a year this dropped to less than 1 per cent.
Research in the Belarussian sector of the exclusion zone found that boar, elk and roe deer populations exploded between 1987 and 1996. By the mid-1990s, wolves were so plentiful they were becoming a nuisance to farmers.
“Our research with Belarussian colleagues has found mammal populations in the reserve similar to other nature reserves in the region,” says James Smith from the School of Environmental, Geographical and Geological Sciences, University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom. “Wolf numbers are seven times higher, likely due to much lower hunting pressure in the CEZ.”
Smith, together with Nick Beresford from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, has conducted extensive research on wildlife in the area.
“Our camera trap surveys in Ukraine have photographed Eurasian lynx, brown bear, black storks and European bison. Ukrainian and Belarussian researchers have recorded hundreds of plant and animal species in the zone, including more than 60 [rare] species,” says Beresford.
Sergiy Zibtsev, a forestry expert at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, says it’s ironic that it’s taken a nuclear accident to create a richer forest ecosystem in the CEZ. “The pine plantations that were there in 1986 have given way to more biodiverse primary forests, which are more resilient to climate change and wildfires and better able to sequester carbon,” he says.
One of the main goals of the UNEP-GEF project, which focuses equally on flora and fauna, is to help the Government of Ukraine develop policies to reverse environmental degradation and prevent future man-made disasters. It also aims to address Sustainable Development Goal 15, which calls on countries to sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.
“Nature’s resilience can buffer human societies from disasters,” says Christophersen. “As we head towards the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, and especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to remember that natural ecosystems are essential for human health and well-being.”
Johan Robinson, head of UNEP’s GEF Biodiversity and Land Degradation Unit, adds: “COVID-19 has taught us that life on Earth is interconnected. As a dominant species in the web of interaction, people have a huge responsibility to get it right. In the exclusion zone, this includes taking into account biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration and sustainable land management while managing this landscape. The project is helping the Government of Ukraine to attain this know-how.”
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030, led by the United Nations Environment Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and partners, covers terrestrial as well as coastal and marine ecosystems. A global call to action, it will draw together political support, scientific research and financial muscle to massively scale up restoration. Find out how you can contribute to the UN Decade.
For more information on conserving, enhancing and managing carbon stocks and biodiversity in the exclusion zone and UNEP’s work on biodiversity, please contact Mahir Aliyev: Mahir.Aliyev@un.org.
