Communities in northern Japan are being overwhelmed by radioactive wild boars which are rampaging across the countryside after being contaminated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Municipal incinerators have been used to dispose of the boars, but there is a shortage of personnel needed to perform the gruelling and messy task of chopping up their bodies. Photo: Shin Yoshino / Corbis

By Will Worley
7 April 2016 (The Independent) – Radioactive boars are running wild and breeding uncontrollably in the northern region of Japan contaminated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The animals have been devastating local agriculture and eating toxic, nuclear-contaminated food from around the accident site. Mass graves and incinerators have been unable to cope with the quantity of boar corpses, shot by local hunters. A quarantine zone near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant where a 2011 meltdown leaked radioactive material into the surrounding countryside has been uninhabited by humans since the disaster. However, boars remained in the area, unchecked by humans. Their precise number is unknown, but since 2014, the number of boars hunted has increased from 3,000 to 13,000, The Times reported. The damage to local farms beyond the quarantine zone caused by the boars has correspondingly increased, amounting to ¥98 million (£620,000) since the accident. The animals are now being killed faster than they can be buried. Three mass graves, big enough for 600 boars each, are almost full in the city of Nihonmatsu, 35 miles from the nuclear plant. There is no more public land on which further mass graves can be dug. [more]

Radioactive wild boars rampaging around Fukushima nuclear site