Chornobyl Food and help for the dogs of Prypiat.

Tarzan the dog lived at the Chornobyl-2 checkpoint. He met every group, walked with it around the site and sometimes even rode the bus with the tourists. The whole team knew him, and guests from different countries later asked about him on social media.

There are hundreds of dogs like him in the Zone. They are descendants of the animals their owners had to leave behind during the 1986 evacuation. In 2019 the Clean Futures Fund counted about 750 dogs in the Zone. Visitors feed them - sandwiches and chocolate. For an animal, such a treat can be deadly.

On the way to the Zone, people think about water, snacks and mosquito repellent. But not about meeting so many animals they will want to feed. So in the summer of 2020 we launched CHORNOBYL FOOD. It is a healthy, balanced food for dogs and foxes. We made and packed it ourselves, at Chornobyl HUB on Andriivskyi Descent, and sold it at our information centers in the Zone. Guests were glad: at last they could feed an animal and know for sure it would do no harm.

Every pack carries a request not to feed wild animals ordinary food. We borrowed this message from the space center at Cape Canaveral: there, too, visitors are asked not to feed human food to the alligators.

And together with volunteer Lala Tarapakina, who looks after the dogs of the Zone, we vaccinated the animals.