Oct 05, 2015 04:29 PM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

The exclusion zone around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine has been left alone for so long, wildlife has increasingly inhabited it.

According to BBC News, authors of a study published in the journal Current Biology project future wildlife populations to be greater than they were prior to the catastrophic explosion of 1986.

Wildlife inhabiting parts around the exclusion zone is not necessarily a good thing, even if it has been untouched by humans for two decades.

"It's just that the effects of human habitation, including hunting, farming, and forestry, are a lot worse," study lead author Jim Smith, of the University of Portsmouth, told BBC News.

Though researchers have studied Chernobyl on and off since the explosion, people are not allowed to work more than five hours each day for one month at a time. Then, visitors need to stay away for 15 days. Radiation levels are so high, even recently, they are not expected to normalize for another 20,000 years.

"There is no evidence that the animals of Chernobyl are achieving the levels of population growth that are frequently seen in other regions where they are protected from predation or hunting," Tim Mousseau from the University of South Carolina, told BBC News.

The researchers did not examine the effects of radiation on individual animals, but are trying to gauge how it effects the populations on the whole. The study also shows what happens to wildlife when humans are taken completely out of the picture.

"When humans are removed, nature flourishes - even in the wake of the world's worst nuclear accident," Smith told Reuters. "It's very likely that wildlife numbers at Chernobyl are now much higher than they were before the accident."

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