More than a decade after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant’s meltdown — and nearly five years after the world’s most powerful earthquake and tsunami ever struck Japan — its wildlife is thriving.
The fallout from the meltdown from power plant has settled in the Gobi Desert, a now carpeted with thousands of migratory birds that use this part of the world as a stopover to evade other animals and birds, according to recently released BBC footage.
Largely by luck, instead of dying because of the radiation, they are thriving — as 70 percent of the international IUCN Red List of Threatened Species show, according to a BBC Report.
Although still injured, among the flights of thousands of migratory birds were at least 300 yellow wagtails, a species recently listed as endangered by the IUCN, according to a recent report from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
A separate BBC report from September showed vast numbers of birds once known for being among the most endangered birds could now be found around Fukushima, a rare bird called the mantled clapper rail, considered one of the last large-bodied birds in the world.
As the BBC reports, “the Japanese government is currently considering re-habilitation measures for the survivors.” The BBC says its own investigations show “it will be at least three years before those [the Mantled Clapper Rail] will again be flying freely.”
