A panel of Government of Japan today proposed a series of measures to control the bear population in the country, including incentives for hunting, given the record number of attacks by these animals to humans during the last year.
The experts of Ministry of Environment They ask to include the native bears between the “species designated for a control and trapping program”, in response to the social alarm generated by the unprecedented increase in encounters with bears and cases that resulted in injuries or even death of people.
Since April 2023, a total of 197 bear attacks have been recorded in 19 prefectures in Japan, resulting in 6 fatalities, according to official data, which are the highest figures so far recorded.
Sightings and attacks have spiked in residential areas since last fall, something experts blame on unusually high temperatures that reduced the availability of nuts and acorns, the bears’ main foods, pushing the animals to venture beyond their usual habitats.
The government panel’s proposal asks municipalities to designate areas of territory as bear habitat, clearly differentiated from human residential areas, and to monitor the animal population to ensure that it remains at levels “healthy”.
In addition, it is recommended to add bears to the list of other animals Subsidies are offered for hunting, which also includes local species of deer and wild boar.
The native bears of the Japanese archipelago are the ‘Ursus thibetanus japonicus’, a subspecies of the Asian bear classified as vulnerable or with a high probability of becoming endangered, and the Ussuri brown bears (“Ursus arctos lasiotus”), which exclusively inhabit on the northern island of Hokkaido.
The proposal calls for excluding from the program control and hunting of native bears from the island region of Shikoku, belonging to the first variety and considered especially Danger of extinctionwhile it is believed that animals of the same subspecies are spreading throughout the rest of Japan.
Experts also believe that other factors that are contributing to increased bear activity in human residential areas are the increasing number of abandoned farms and the decline in hunters and forestry workersall derived from the demographic decline that is going through Japanespecially in rural areas.
Source: Gestion
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