Wild Przewalski's horses graze in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl. 



ENDPAPER 



Twenty years ago, on April 26, 

 1986, a reactor at the Cher- 

 nobyl nuclear power station 

 exploded and burned, spewing radia- 

 tion around the globe and blanketing 

 large swaths of what was then the 

 Soviet Union with heavy contami- 

 nation. Ever since that day, the word 

 "Chernobyl" has become a synonym 

 for "horrific disaster," conjuring the 

 lifeless radioactive deserts of Atomic 

 Age sci fi. 



Whenever I thought about the 

 irradiated land fifty miles north of 

 Kiev, it always seemed the last place 

 on Earth to go for the study of nat- 

 ural history. Natural history is about 

 life — what plants and animals do. But 

 wouldn't a search for life in such a 

 dead zone be, at best, oxymoronic? 

 Surely, one would do better studying 

 the natural history of a parking lot. 



What I found at Chernobyl instead 

 was an astonishing new ecosystem 

 that defied my gloomy imaginings. 

 The evacuation of more than 300,000 

 people from an "exclusion zone" 

 surrounding the reactor was a trau- 

 matic interruption of their lives. But 

 the ban on human habitation and 

 activities has enabled an area of 1,800 

 square miles — almost double the size 

 of Rhode Island, or half a Yellowstone 

 Park — to come back to life. Today 

 Chernobyl is Europe's largest nature 

 sanctuary, with rebounding popula- 

 tions of deer, moose, and wild boar. 



During more than twenty visits to 

 the zone, I've seen wolves in broad 

 daylight, heard the call of an endan- 

 gered lynx at nightfall, and spent 

 hours communing with a herd of 

 rare Przewalski's horses that were 

 experimentally released into the wild 



Chernobyl 

 Paradox 



By Mary My do 



there. Like their habitat, they are 

 radioactive — cesium- 137 packs into 

 their muscles and strontium-90 into 

 their bones. But to nearly everyone's 

 surprise, they are also thriving. 



The international border between 

 Belarus and Ukraine cuts the ex- 

 clusion zone into two roughly equal 

 regions, but the border is meaningless 

 to wildlife. When a lone brown bear 

 (one of the few species not to have 

 made a Chernobyl comeback) wan- 

 dered from one region to another, the 

 Ukrainians thought it came from 

 Belarus, and the Belarusians thought 

 it came from Ukraine. As for the bear, 

 it disappeared, with no hint of its ori- 

 gins or clue to its destination. 



Of course, birds, too, are indiffer- 

 ent to borders. In February migrating 

 swans infected with avian flu virus 

 arrived in western Europe from an 

 unusually frigid Ukraine and Russia. 

 But birds are not indifferent when it 

 comes to choosing between places 

 where people live and places where 

 they don't. As many as 280 species of 

 birds have appeared around Cherno- 

 byl, including such rare species as 

 black storks and aquatic warblers. 



Birds that nest in places highly 

 contaminated with strontium-90 can 

 suffer. The isotope mimics calcium 

 and accumulates in eggshells, bom- 



barding embryos with beta particles. 

 Some species, such as barn swallows, 

 have depressed fertility. But for now, 

 at least, the benefits of the human- 

 free habitat seem to outweigh the 

 untoward effects of radiation. 



My most memorable encounter 

 with Chernobyl birds was in Belarus, 

 which is restoring some peat mires 

 that the Soviet Union drained for 

 farming. The area is one of the most 

 contaminated places in the country — 

 and on the planet. But the contami- 

 nation is mostly cesium- 137, which 

 doesn't accumulate in eggshells, rather 

 than strontium-90, which does. 



When my guide and I arrived, 

 dozens of black storks pierced the air 

 above our van with their red beaks. 

 Thousands of ducks took off in a 

 tornadolike cloud. A blur of mute 

 swans, grey herons, and great white 

 egrets flew deep into the reflooded 

 peat mires. 



"It's so beautiful," I murmured. 



"And radioactive," said my guide. 



"If it weren't radioactive," I 

 replied, "it would be a farm, and 

 there would be no birds." 



It is Chernobyl's most profound 

 paradox. The worst nuclear disaster 

 in history wreaked havoc with 

 people's lives and rendered a vast 

 territory uninhabitable. 



But in the absence of humans, 

 Chernobyl's wildlife is not just doing 

 fine. It is flourishing, beautiful — and 

 radioactive. 



Mary Mycio is an American writer living 

 and working in Ukraine. She is the author of 

 Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of 

 Chernobyl (Joseph Henr)' Press, 2005). Visit 

 www.chernobyl.in.ua to view a gallery of 

 photographs and read excerpts from her book. 



80 



NATURAL HISTORY April 2006 



