Wildlife in Chornobyl is changing its behaviour during Russian invasion
Freiburg, 19/06/2026
An international research team has for the first time investigated how an unfolding armed conflict affected wildlife. During the Russian occupation of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone in 2022, the scientists used camera traps to document that red deer, roe deer, foxes, and wild boar adjusted their activity patterns in response to the hostilities. The findings have been published in the journal Science.
Przewalski’s horses near the former Chernobyl nuclear power station in 2020. Photo: Kateryna Korepanova
An international research team has for the first time investigated how an unfolding armed conflict influenced the behaviour of wild animals. Using camera traps, the scientists documented how the Russian occupation of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone during the 2022 war in Ukraine affected the activity of the animals living in the area. Data analysis shows that red deer, roe deer, foxes, and wild boar adjusted their day and night activity to the hostilities during this period. The team led by Dr Svitlana Kudrenko, who earned her PhD at the University of Freiburg, and Prof. Dr Marco Heurich of the University of Freiburg has published its findings in the prestigious journal Science.
“Our findings show that the diurnal activity patterns of mammals, particularly their nocturnal activity, changed during intensifying armed conflict. This points to a broader transformation of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone — away from an ecosystem that, in the absence of human disturbance, had recovered from the reactor disaster, toward a militarised landscape in which wildlife habitat use and behaviour changed,” says Marco Heurich.
“Our findings show that the diurnal activity patterns of mammals, particularly their nocturnal activity, changed during intensifying armed conflict. This points to a broader transformation of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone — away from an ecosystem that, in the absence of human disturbance, had recovered from the reactor disaster, toward a militarised landscape in which wildlife habitat use and behaviour changed,” says Marco Heurich.”
Prof. Dr Marco Heurich
Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Biology at the University of Freiburg
An unintended scientific experiment amidst the Russian invasion
The Chornobyl Exclusion Zone covers an area of 2,600 km². Following the 1986 nuclear disaster and radioactive contamination, most of the area was designated a biosphere reserve. “The minimal human presence in the zone enhanced an increase in wildlife populations and led to recolonisation of the area by species that had become locally extinct before the catastrophe — such as brown bears and lynx — or those that were found only in small numbers, such as moose, red deer, wild boar, and grey wolf,” explains Kudrenko. In addition, the endangered Przewalski’s horse and the European bison were reintroduced in the 1990s.
The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone covers an area of 2,600 square kilometres. The aerial photograph shows the cooling pond of the former nuclear power plant, among other things. Following the nuclear disaster of 1986 and the resulting radioactive contamination, much of the area was designated a biosphere and nature reserve. Photo: Kateryna Korepanova
This map shows the study area within the Ukrainian part of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Light brown dots indicate the locations of the 25 camera traps that were active in 2021, and black dots show the locations of the 31 traps that were active in both 2021 and during the occupation in 2022. Dashed lines indicate major roads through the area. Image: Svitlana Kudrenko
Russian forces occupied the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone for 36 days, from February 24 to April 1, 2022. Since 2021, scientists had been monitoring a lynx population there using camera traps. After the end of the occupation, the team realised that the tragedy of war offered a chance to ask a new research question: How exactly did wild animals react to the immediate presence of armed conflict? “Alongside our original research project, we were also able to investigate what had previously only been studied in military training areas,” says Heurich. Following the withdrawal of the Russian forces, researchers were able to recover data from 31 camera traps, with the aid of Ukrainian armed forces who cleared mines and secured the area.
Analysis reveals link between the intensity of conflict and species-specific behaviour
The camera traps, which were triggered by infrared sensors, steadily recorded images from January 19 to May 6, 2022 — that is, immediately before, during, and after the occupation. As the basis for their analysis, the researchers compared this data with images from the 31 camera traps and an additional 25 camera traps from the year prior to the invasion between January 19 and March 21, 2021.
In a further analysis, the team assessed the daily intensity of the armed conflict in 2022 and related it to the animals’ daily activity patterns. “To do this, we derived an index of conflict intensity based on interviews, including with employees of the nuclear plant. In this index, we rated events such as military convoys, live firing, airstrikes, artillery shelling on a scale from zero to ten. We also took into account other factors, such as precipitation, proximity to roads or areas with a permanent human presence, and thermal anomalies such as bombardments or forest fires,” explains Kudrenko.
As conflict intensifies, animal activity during the day increases
Using the data, researchers studied the behaviour of eleven animal species. “We initially assumed that, in response to disturbances caused by the armed conflict, animals would become more nocturnal, wary, and would avoid places with a constant human presence. Such behaviour has already been documented, and we had assumed that it would intensify during the armed conflict.”
In 2020 and 2021, Kudrenko and Heurich used camera traps in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone to study the impact of human activity on the landscape and biodiversity. These images of a roe deer and a fox were captured by camera traps in 2020. Photos: Frankfurt Zoological Society & Chornobyl Radiation and Ecological Biosphere Reserve/Wild Polissia Program (camera trap).
While this was true for some of the species studied, the researchers also observed species-specific behaviours that deviated from previous assumptions: red deer and red foxes reduced their nocturnal activity during the occupation compared to the same period the previous year. “The decline in night-time detections suggests that these species have shifted their activity to daytime hours in response to increased conflict intensity,” says Kudrenko. “Overall detections of roe deer declined while overall detections of red deer increased amid rising conflict intensity. We also observed that brown hare and red deer responded to thermal anomalies, mainly conflict-related forest fires, by becoming more active at night.”
Further information
- Original publication: Svitlana Kudrenko et al., Changes in wildlife activity patterns in response to war in Ukraine. Science 392,1282-1286 (2026). DOI:10.1126/science.aed1493
- Dr Svitlana Kudrenko conducted this study as part of her doctoral research at the Chair of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Biology at the University of Freiburg, while working as a research fellow at the Frankfurt Zoological Society.
- Marco Heurich is Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Biology at the University of Freiburg. He served as the advisor for the doctoral dissertation. His research focuses on applied ecology, conservation, and remote sensing, with a particular emphasis on the role of large mammals in ecosystem processes.
- The study was funded and coordinated by the ‘Wild Polissia’ project, led by the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS). This project is supported by the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme, managed by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative in partnership with Arcadia.
How Human Activity in Chornobyl Affects Biodiversity
Prior to the occupation, Dr. Svitlana Kudrenko and Prof. Dr. Marco Heurich had already used camera traps in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone in 2020 and 2021 to study how human activity affects landscape features, biodiversity, and the likelihood of animal habitation. The researchers set up camera traps at 174 locations in the Ukrainian part of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, as well as in six protected areas and in unprotected areas along the Belarusian-Ukrainian border. They concluded that biodiversity and occupancy rates were higher in the large, contiguous Chornobyl Exclusion Zone than in smaller regional protected areas and in unprotected areas across northern Ukraine. In the unprotected areas, however, biodiversity and occupancy rates were at similarly high levels as in the neighbouring small protected areas. “Our interpretation is that small, fragmented regional protected areas may simply be too small to sustainably support numerous populations of species with large ranges,” explains Kudrenko. Kudrenko and Heurich published their findings in May 2026 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Originalpublikation: Kudrenko, S., Bischof, R., Zedrosser, A., Borsuk, O., Fiderer, C., Smith, A. F. & Heurich, M. (2026). The Chornobyl Exclusion Zone as a wildlife refuge: restricted human access shaped mammal recolonization. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 293(2071), 20253151.