From news @ nature:
Chernobyl’s ecosystems seem to be bouncing back, 19 years after the region was blasted with radiation from the ill-fated reactor. Researchers who have surveyed the land around the old nuclear power plant in present-day Ukraine say that biodiversity is actually higher than before the disaster.
Some 100 species on the IUCN Red List of threatened species are now found in the evacuated zone, which covers more than 4,000 square kilometres in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, says Viktor Dolin, who studies the environmental effects of radioactivity at the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences in Kiev. Around 40 of these, including some species of bear and wolf, were not seen there before the accident….
How has this happened, given that radiation levels are still too high for humans to return safely? Morris thinks that many of the organisms mutated by the fallout have died, leaving behind those that have not suffered problems with growth and reproduction.
“It’s evolution on steroids. There are a lot of deleterious mutations in species but these seem to be very quickly weeded out,” Morris explains.
Those species of bear and wolf….um, were they seen anywhere before the accident?
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