Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone covers about 2,600 square kilometers of Ukraine's Kyiv Oblast, established in 1986 after the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster forced the evacuation of roughly 120,000 people from the city of Pripyat and more than 187 surrounding communities. Nearly four decades of almost complete human absence have allowed the zone's forests and wetlands to recover into what researchers now describe as one of Europe's largest de facto nature reserves, with wolves, wild boar, deer, moose and eagles now living at higher densities than before the disaster. Przewalski's horses and European bison have been reintroduced to the zone, and scientists continue to study how elevated radiation levels affect the health of the wildlife that now thrives there.