Photo by UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology By the mid-1990s, wolves were so plentiful they were becoming a nuisance to farmers.Ī host of animals, including Eurasian lynx, have returned to the Chernobyl area. Research in the Belarussian sector of the exclusion zone found that boar, elk and roe deer populations exploded between 19. 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. A 30-kilometre exclusion zone was created around the reactor leaving two large towns, as well as more than 100 villages and farms, empty.īut most of the radioactivity released from the reactor decayed rapidly. The disaster forced more than 100,000 people from their homes. In the spring of 1986, Chernobyl’s #4 reactor caught fire and exploded, sending a plume of radiation into the atmosphere. “Both reserves will allow natural forest to help cleanse contaminated land and waterways,” says Aliyev. 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. 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.Ī black grouse in the area around the Chernobyl nuclear plant, the site of the worst nuclear accident in human history. UNEP is working with Ukraine’s Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources and the State Agency on the CEZ to support that renaissance.
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