JAPAN'S BEAR PROBLEM

A dwindling band of ageing hunters is on the front line as the country grapples with increased bear attacks

- REUTERS

SUNAGAWA, Japan - A gunshot rang out on a recent morning in a meadow in northern Japan. A brown bear slumped in a cage, watched by a handful of city officials and hunters.

The bear had been roaming around a nearby house and eating its way through adjacent cornfields, so officials and hunters in Sunagawa city set a trap with a deer carcass to lure the voracious creature.

"For me, it is always a bit deflating when a bear gets caught," Mr Haruo Ikegami, 75, who heads the local hunters' association, said beforehand.

Japan is grappling with a growing bear problem. A dwindling band of ageing hunters is on the front line.

A record 219 people were victims of bear attacks, six of them fatal, in the 12 months through March 2024, while more than 9,000 black and brown bears were trapped and culled over that period, according to Japan's Environment Ministry.

Both species' habitats have been expanding.

The ministry estimates that the number of brown bears in Hokkaido, Japan's northern island, more than doubled to about 11,700 in the three decades through 2020. It does not keep estimates on black bears, most of which live on Japan's main island, though a widely cited 2023 analysis by the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper estimated their numbers at roughly 44,000, a threefold increase since 2012.

Restrictions on hunting practices and greater emphasis on conservation contributed to a surge in bear sightings over recent decades, according to Japan's Forest Research and Management Organisation.

With Japan's rural areas experiencing rapid demographic decline, bears are venturing closer to towns and villages and into abandoned farmland, an Environment Ministry expert panel said in February.