image sourced from original article at Nearly four decades after the nuclear disaster, the Chernobyl exclusion zone remains largely uninhabitable for people. Yet in the absence of sustained human activity, wildlife has made a remarkable comeback across the contaminated landscape spanning parts of Ukraine and Belarus.
Wolves now roam the abandoned territory, while brown bears have returned after more than a century away. Populations of lynx, moose and red deer have rebounded, and packs of free-roaming dogs have established themselves. Przewalski's horses, a rare species once extinct in the wild and native to Mongolia, were introduced in 1998 as part of a conservation effort and are now thriving in the radioactive zone.
