The worst nuclear disaster in history created Europe's third-largest nature reserve. The world's most militarized border became a sanctuary for endangered species. What happens when humans are forced to leave? Are we the problem we’re trying to solve?
Welcome to Plain Sight by Wyzr, where we bring hidden patterns into plain sight. Every week, we explore stories and ideas that help us understand why we are the way we are.
The Great Rewilding: What Happens When Nature's Deadliest Predator Leaves
On April 26, 1986, Reactor 4 at Chernobyl exploded, releasing radiation equivalent to 400 times the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The disaster forced more than 100,000 people from their homes. A 30-kilometre exclusion zone was created around the reactor leaving two large towns, as well as more than 100 villages and farms, empty.
What happened next defied every prediction.
Researchers have found the land surrounding the plant, which has been largely off limits to humans for three decades, has become a haven for wildlife, with lynx, bison, deer and other animals roaming through thick forests. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), covering 2,800 square kilometres of northern Ukraine, is now Europe’s third-largest nature reserve.
Let that sink in: The worst nuclear disaster in human history created a thriving wildlife sanctuary.
And Chernobyl isn’t unique.
Far from Chernobyl, along the border between North and South Korea, lies the most militarized border on Earth: the Korean Demilitarized Zone. The DMZ was established in 1953 as a no-person’s zone between the warring halves of the peninsula. Populations were removed, and the area was seeded with landmines.
Some 800 soldiers have been killed during flare-ups in and around the DMZ since the war ended without a peace treaty.
It is, quite literally, one of the most dangerous places on Earth for humans.
And yet, within this 250-km-long and 4-km-wide strip of restricted land, nature has flourished. Bears, cranes, deer, otters, and over 6,000 species of plants and animals, including more than 100 endangered species, call the DMZ home.
Nuclear radiation is less harmful to wildlife populations than normal human economic activity.
Nick Beresford, a radioecologist at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, explains the uncomfortable reality: “I wouldn’t say having a nuclear event is a good idea, but you could argue that there is a net positive impact on wildlife in the greater Chernobyl area. It is not the nuclear accident that causes that, it is our response to the accident, which is to remove people to protect them and therefore there is less disturbance on wildlife.”
The very things that create these accidental edens are also what protects them.
Kim Seung-ho, director of the DMZ Ecology Research Institute, captures the paradox perfectly: “I can’t help but worry that this area will face a serious threat. If we had preserved the region because we had agreed it’s environmentally valuable, then it can be kept intact regardless of political circumstances. But this region was preserved because of the presence of military forces. Once the military tension disappears, it may naturally follow that people feel a strong urge to transform the area.”
In other words, peace threatens paradise. The end of conflict could mean the end of conservation.
This pattern repeats across the globe. Military zones become wildlife refuges. Disaster areas become biodiversity hotspots. Abandoned cities become forests. When people are forced out of conflict zones or disputed territory - wildlife often makes a comeback.
The Great Rewilding reveals an uncomfortable truth about our relationship with nature. We like to think of ourselves as stewards, managers, conservationists. But the evidence suggests something sinister - we are the problem we’re trying to solve.
Our conservation efforts - the national parks, the protected areas, the wildlife corridors - are really just attempts to manage our own impact.
Places like Chernobyl and the DMZ show us what real conservation looks like: our complete absence.
If wolves thrive in radioactive forests and cranes flourish in minefields, what does that say about our vision of “sustainable development”? What does it mean for our cities, our farms, our managed wilderness?
Maybe the most effective environmental policy isn’t better technology or smarter regulations. Maybe it’s just getting out of the way.
The Great Rewilding suggests that nature doesn’t need us to save it. It needs us to leave it alone. And perhaps the most radical conservation idea isn’t creating more parks - it’s admitting that the world might be better off with fewer of us in it.
That’s a thought most environmentalists won’t say out loud. But it’s exactly what the wolves of Chernobyl and the cranes of the DMZ whisper every day through their very existence.
So here’s a question worth pondering: If nature thrives most in our complete absence – in radioactive zones and minefields – what does this say about our role as environmental stewards? Are we fooling ourselves when we talk about “sustainable development”? And perhaps more uncomfortably: if the planet’s biodiversity is demonstrably better off without us, what moral obligation do we have to step back?
Write to us with your thoughts at plainsight@wyzr.in. We’ll share the most compelling responses in future editions.
What we’re watching this week
Radioactive Wolves (PBS Nature, 2011)
What happens to nature after a nuclear accident? And how does wildlife deal with the world it inherits after human inhabitants have fled?
This haunting documentary follows scientists studying the wildlife in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone - an unintended ecological experiment. As forests reclaim villages and wolves rule the ruins, the film explores how nature has not just survived, but thrived, in a place once deemed lifeless.
An unforgettable look at what might be the most successful conservation project we never meant to create.
Hope you enjoyed this edition of Plain Sight. If you did, do share with your friends. Until next week.
Best,
Utkarsh
