Ukrainian Cameras Caught a Brown Bear Inside the Chernobyl Zone - Where Did It Come From?

The Chernobyl bear is a brown bear that walked, uninvited, into the Chernobyl exclusion zone and ended up on a Ukrainian camera trap, yet nobody released it and nobody planned it. Data from Sergii Gashchak's cameras contained the animal in October 2014, and headlines called it the first bear seen there in more than a hundred years. The researchers' own abstract says centuries, and a 2003 sighting without a photograph is one more reason to be careful with the word "first". Researchers also report lynx, wolves, moose and Przewalski's horses in the zone, and scientists read the same animals in opposite ways. Is a bear in Chernobyl proof that radiation is harmless, or only that people were the worse threat? The film weighs the evidence, from a handful of bears to Fukushima and the Korean DMZ. Subscribe for more wildlife stories, and leave a comment with your own take on the bear. CHAPTERS 0:00 A Brown Bear in Chernobyl 0:12 Chernobyl Bear: Radiation or People? 0:46 Chernobyl Exclusion Zone Explained 3:50 Bear Rumours and the Red Forest 6:19 The Bear Nobody Released 8:58 Wolves, Bears and the Radiation Debate 11:57 Lynx, Occupation and a Fragile Refuge 14:53 The Question Behind Every Camera 15:17 Belarus, Fukushima and the Korean DMZ 19:28 An Uneasy Refuge, Not Dead Ground #brownbear #chernobyl #wildlifedocumentary