Deserted & Still Dangerous

The Japanese government is trying to restore Fukushima following the 2011 nuclear disaster but right now only wild boars want to live there.

- Richard Van Rensburg

THERE’S not a person in sight. Homes, businesses, cars – all still abandoned six years after one of the worst nuclear disasters in world history turned the region into a radioactive no-go zone.

Triggered by one of the most powerful earthquakes ever to hit Southeast Asia, a meltdown at the nuclear plant in the Japanese prefecture of Fukushima enforced a 20-km exclusion zone around the power plant. About 160 000 people were displaced as a result.

Once a thriving industrial hub, Fukushima – which ironically means “good fortune” – became a ghost town. Yet not all life was removed from the decimated area: wild boars are thriving here. More specifically, radioactive wild boars.

They roam the deserted streets, plots and farms in their thousands. Thanks to the exodus of people from the area their numbers have swelled, increasing fourfold since 2014.

“After the people left, the boars’ ecosystem changed,” explains Shoichi Sakamoto, a local hunter. “They began coming down from the mountains and they aren’t going back. They find plenty of food – this is their new home now.” The boars use the abandoned homes for breeding and shelter, says Professor Okuda Keitokunin of the Fukushima University Environmental Radioactivity Institute.

This is just one of the many problems faced by Japanese authorities who are trying to restore the region and get former residents to return.

As a last resort, hunters were hired to cull the boars. Shoichi and his team have trapped hundreds of the animals by luring them into enclosures with food such as rice flour, before shooting them and burning or burying their carcasses.