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Decades after the Chernobyl disaster, what happened to large mammal populations in the exclusion zone?

Past stat · 2026-07-12 UTC

The answer

Once people left the exclusion zone, wolf, elk, and wild boar populations bounced back hard. Radiation still does harm at the individual level, but removing hunting and farming from the equation turned out to matter more for overall numbers.

Correct answer: They increased substantially

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