The Chernobyl exclusion zone, also known as the 30 kilometer zone or the Chernobyl nuclear power plant Zone of alienation, was established by the USSR military shortly after the April 26, 1986 nuclear disaster.

Some 100 species on the IUCN Red List of threatened species are now found in the zone, which covers more than 4,000 square km in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

Around forty of these, including some species of bear and wolf, were not seen there before the accident.

Today, the zone is a tourist destination. In 2002, it was opened for tourism, but this doesn’t mean that people can live there.

Few dozens different radioactive elements, including strontium-90 and decay products of uranium and plutonium, were released into the zone, and it will be many hundreds of millennia before humans could move safely back.