India, Oct. 23 -- Chernobyl is known as a place people had to flee. Yet in 1998, a conservation program brought a rare wild horse there on purpose. A 2019 study by Sergii Gashchak and Sergii Paskevych, published in Theriologia Ukrainica, used camera traps in 2018 and counted 137 Przewalski's horses in the Ukrainian part of the exclusion zone. That number is more impressive when you look at how the story started. Poaching and early losses took their toll, but the herd survived.

Przewalski's horse is a rare wild horse found in open steppe landscapes. In 1998, the Askania Nova Biosphere Reserve initiated a program to establish a free-ranging herd in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. The aim was to help restore the area's biodiversity. According...