Radiation appears to have a lesser effect on animals than human activity and interference – see http://phys.org/print380252676.html. Robert Farrar has also sent in the link to http://crev.info/2016/04/why-chernobyl-neighbors-are-not-dying/ … and the same story can be seen at other online sites (now or in the recent past). We might begin by saying here we go again -Chernobyl and the exclusive zone. However, this time some further information is p[assed on to Joe Public. Some of the animals in the exclusion zone, such as Dzungarian horses, were deliberately introduced as an experiment. They now graze on the former fields of farms. Eventually even the farm land will become forest – or wooded, so what will then happen to the horses. Lots of questions remain and it is clear that humans still have control over the exclusion zone. However, and there is always something to pause the button, animals do thrive in the exclusion zone and this can only be as a result of the exclusion of humans (farmers and environmentalists alike). Wildlife is unhindered by hunting, pest control, and the like. However, animals common to farm and adapted to humans, such as pigeons and sparrows, have not thrived. They rely on eating crops or human handouts. We amy wonder why there were so many passenger pigeons in N America when Europeans arrived – was it as a result of native American farming practises?
At first the local forest succombed to the radiation outburst and 10 square km of forest was devastated. Nature, being a resilient thing soon adapted and over the course of the last 30 years forest has regenerated, smothering the old, and so did the animals of the forest -such as elk, wolves, bears, lynx, white tailed eagles (and so on, the most noticed sort of animal from a camera point of view, and no doubt all the little wildlife is also thriving, from wood mice to sparrow hawks and jays.