http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2...rsary-science/
So far, scientists are divided on how well the animals are really doing in the exclusion zone, which straddles Ukraine and Belarus, says biologist Jim Beasley of the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, who has been studying wolves there with grant support from the National Geographic Society Committee for Research and Exploration.


In a new study released Monday, Beasley says that the population of large mammals on the Belarus side has increased since the disaster. He was shocked by the number of animals he saw there in a five-week survey. Camera traps captured images of a bison, 21 boars, nine badgers, 26 gray wolves, 60 raccoon dogs (an Asian species also called a tanuki), and 10 red foxes. “It’s just incredible. You can’t go anywhere without seeing wolves,” he says. (See a video about wolves taking back Chernobyl.)


Radiation, he argues in the study, is not holding back Chernobyl wildlife populations
Seems like the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone has become a major nature preserve. I must say that it's a bit sad that the most ecologically healthy zones appear to be the ones we either haven't made roads into settling or are unable to enter. I mean between Chernobyl and the Korean Demilitarized Zone (which also became a nature reserve, with Siberian tigers possibly inhabiting the Demilitarized Zone).