Japanese farmers living near the Fukushima nuclear power plant are struggling to overcome an unexpected outcome from the disaster: a surge in radioactive wild boars!
In the last five years, the population of contaminated creatures has been inadvertently left to flourish in the area near the power plant that the Japanese government deemed to be an 'exclusion zone.'
As such, experts say that their numbers have grown from a mere 3,000 to a whopping 13,000 wild boars.
And, as their numbers swell, the boars have begun expanding beyond the exclusion zone and into nearby farms, leading to devastation as the insatiable animals feast on the food found there.
The cruel irony of the problem is that the boars would normally be a fantastic food source, but the radioactivity of the area has rendered them completely inedible and, thus, an enormous nuisance.
There is hope that specialized hunters will help reduce the population in the area, but just eliminating the boars that have been killed has already proven to a daunting task as mass graves are overflowing and incinerators are being pushed to the limit.
With nearly a million dollars in damage to the agriculture of the area and no sign of the population explosion stopping, farmers in the Fukushima area may merely be the first victims of a wild boar wave that sweeps over Japan.
It's a frightening fallout from the disaster that very few may have foreseen and an ominous reminder that the worst effects of Fukushima could still be waiting to unfold.
Source: Daily Mail