Animals often thrive when humans take themselves out of the picture. It’s the same principle that’s allowed America to turn dozens of massive landfills into teeming and secure wildlife habitats. Nomans Land Island Wildlife Refuge, off Martha’s Vineyard, is a haven for cormorants and terns; after 54 years of use as a firing range by the US Navy, even a massive cleanup effort in 1997 couldn’t assure that all explosive ordinance had been cleared. Most famously, though, humans shelled themselves right out of the 150 by 2.5-mile, mine-filled Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. The DMZ has become home to dozens of bird species, including two endangered cranes, and possibly even Amur leopards, Asiatic black bears, and Siberian tigers. South Korea went so far as to try to have the DMZ declared a UNESCO wildlife conservation. Even Chernobyl, a nuclear wasteland the size of Luxembourg, has somehow, over its 28 years of isolation, become home to a herd of endangered Przewalski’s wild horses and rare European wolves.

posted 3558 days ago