15.04.2006. Wildlife recovers to its natural state in Chernobyl zone. Roads in the evacuation zone somewhat remind of roads to deserted military grounds: quite good surface and no traffic. Alder forests flooded in spring, then endless swamp lands along both sides of the roads.

Continuation of journey notes of "Belarusian News"
special correspondent

Beginning:

1. Homemade vodka helps to forget about radiation
2. Bragin waits for Lukashenko
3. Are there many two-headed calves in Chernobyl zone?

Vassily SEMASHKO (photographs are taken by the author)

Roads in the evacuation zone somewhat remind of roads to deserted military grounds: quite good surface and no traffic. Alder forests flooded in spring, then endless swamp lands along both sides of the roads. The nature gradually recovers to its primeval state without human interference.

Thirty-forty years back entire Belarus faced intensive soil reclamation. The government decided to increase yield capacity by turning swamps into arable lands. Drain gutters dried up swamps; most beautiful small rivers that pleased several Belarusian generations turned into straight lines of drain gutters going through peat fields. The level of subsoil water lowered. Once blossoming floodplain meadows have turned into peat deserts. During the seeding time sowing-machines on such fields are followed by soil compactors, which ram down the ground. Otherwise the light peat soil is taken up by the wind like smoke. Usually after a day on such fields farmers clean out peat nubbles from eyes and noses for a few days. Instead the anticipated cultivated areas extension, Belarus’ authorities just ruined the primeval nature.

Dried up peat often sets on underground fire, which is extremely dangerous. Thick subsurface white turf can burn out for years in a territory of some square kilometers. Such fires can be detected by clouds of stifling smoke in lowlands. Underground fire extinguishing is connected with the great risk to fall in the burning hot ground and usually requires long time and efforts. In some places people intentionally destroy drainage systems and form swamps to save the wildlife.

Polessye was also subjected to amelioration. The soil reclamation canals have been unkept since the Chernobyl accident after people abandoned this district. They were colonized by beavers rapidly propagating their kind. Their dams blocked the canals and the water level went up. Wildlife quickly recovers to its natural state.

The evacuation zone with the reserve in it will remain uninhabitable for many years, or, probably, for centuries. One day our far descendants will see the wild terrain here, free from traces of human interference.

We drive down from an asphalt road to a forest track. The rut is deep. An open-air cage for wisents is some hundred meters away. To be more exact, the wisents walk around a fenced site where a forester dwells. As a matter of fact, the man lives in an open-air cage. Long stay here is undesirable because of the high radiation level. The forester did not have an individual doze meter by the way.

Sixteen wisents were brought here from Belovezhskaya Pushcha national reserve in 1998. Now they are 48. The wisents are not afraid of people at all and come close to the fence bars.

This place is a small hill surrounded by flooded forest. Lots of snakes crawl up here to bask in the sun. Few meters of walking and we see three adders. One of them is black, quite rare species.

We drive further towards the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Monotonous flat land; forests and swamps alternately. Stretched power line poles, wires cut off. Grey wooden huts of dead villages along the road in the distance; concrete bus stop pavilions here and there. Over the 20 years all buildings have overgrown with bushes and trees. Only radiation hazard and fire-prevention signs shining with fresh paint let us know that people come here once in a while.From time to time roedeers run cross the road or birds fly up from nearby trees.

We enter the village of Dronki. It is the center of the reserve. The Chernobyl plant is 24 kilometers away. Dronki looks like all other villages located on the border of the evacuation zone. Same overgrown ransacked huts. But they are less ransacked here than those on the restricted zone periphery.

Old clothes hangs loose on the walls here and there, bits and pieces of furniture, broken toys on the floor, twenty-year-old newspapers, postcards. I saw such picture in the movie “Stalker”. Near one of the huts the dosimeter shows the background radiation level of 190 microroentgen per hour, which is the trip record.

As in many such villages, only the graveyard is used. We notice a new-made grave dated late March 2006. The sand at the tomb edge taken from deep has the background radiation of 113 microroentgen per hour, less than the surface soil. Bushes near the graveyard close to the nearest hut are cut. Someone left footprints on the fire lane sand around the graveyard a day ago.

Time to go back. We are silent and depressed. We hand over the permits at the exit control point. Few kilometers to the nearest inhabited villages. Soon we drive in Khoyniki. Brisk human life. It is hard to keep in mind that the border between the world suitable for life and hostile but insensible radiation is so close.

To be continued ...