Issue:
June 2024 | Letter from Hokkaido
Hokkaido struggles for consensus as it attempts to tackle a rise in bear encounters
In late May, an environment ministry panel called for relaxing restrictions on the use of hunting rifles in urban and residential areas, in response to the increasing number of bears being sighted in cities nationwide.
Currently, the use of rifles within city limits is prohibited by law. Special exceptions are made when deer, wild boar, and bears approach crowded areas. In those cases, local police are called, and licensed hunters must be contacted to track and kill the animal. If the law is changed as recommended, police would no longer have to formally authorize the shooting provided there was clear evidence of a threat.
The ministry’s policy would be applied nationwide. But it would have a particularly heavy impact in Hokkaido’s urban areas, where encounters between humans and bears are increasing. Local officials, anticipating changes in national gun control laws, are already moving forward with their own bear control plans.
Sapporo has spent a year preparing to enact a controversial new policy that the city says will lessen the risks to residents and tourists living beside or trekking through the scenic mountainous and forested areas to the immediate east and west of the city center. That is especially true of the spring months, when Hokkaido’s brown bears emerge from hibernation and have cubs, and in the autumn months, when they are gathering food for the winter.
Under the Sapporo policy, bear traps will be placed in the Mt. Maruyama area and near the city's zoo - a 15-minute subway ride from the center of a city with 1.9 million human inhabitants – and at Mt. Moiwa, southwest of the center of Sapporo. Bears caught in the traps would be killed by hunters, as required by law.
The city and supporters of the policy say the risk of deadly ursine encounters is greater than ever. The local bear population has greatly increased (there were an estimated 5,000 brown bears in all of Hokkaido about three decades ago; today, the estimate is around 15,000), they say, so something must be done. Placing traps has been judged the most practical and efficient way to keep everyone safe.
At the same time, licensed hunters in Japan, and especially in Hokkaido, are older and fewer in number. In response, Hokkaido wants to encourage more people to obtain hunting license by increasing the number of times the test will be given. Newly qualified hunters will still have to gain permission from the police to buy a gun once they have passed their hunting license test. The goal is to nurture the next generation of hunters in Hokkaido - not to kill for sport or food, but to be available if called on by officials and residents to exterminate bears that pose a threat on farmland and residential areas, and tourist spots.
Many people are angry at what they see as official encouragement to go on killing sprees. The loudest voices of protest come major urban areas on Honshu with romantic ideas about the natural world, and for whom “the beauty of Japanese nature” means bonsai and temple gardens, where nature is highly manipulated and made safe for human enjoyment. They can be equally strident about the need to protect bear populations.
But there are also plenty of Hokkaido hunters, including foreigners with Japanese hunting licenses, as well as environmental scientists familiar with bear-control policies in other countries, who have problems with the way Japan deals with its bear population.
They are particularly concerned about two ideas being floated as potentially effective in naturally controlling bears: relocating “problem” animals and reintroducing wolves to Hokkaido.
The first idea gets a lot of attention from foreigners, who wonder why Japan can’t just do what so many other countries do and put the bears to sleep or take them to a remote location. The most common response: where, exactly, in Hokkaido is remote enough? Bears wander great distances, and Hokkaido isn’t really that big compared to, say, the U.S. and Canada. Removing the animals will just make them somebody else’s problem.
The idea of reintroducing wolves makes farmers and cattle ranchers in Japan’s dairy and beef capital nervous. Historically aware Hokkaido residents know that when workhorses from the United States arrived in Hokkaido in the late 19th century, they were attacked and killed by Ezo wolves. In response, the farmers poisoned the wolves, and they eventually went extinct. More than a century later, many people see that as a good thing.
But today’s hunters worry that the government’s proposals amount to a slapdash response to a more fundamental problem. Unlike the U.S. and other countries, Japan does not have park rangers and game wardens. Nor does the Hokkaido prefectural government have the kind of freedom to make decisions about wildlife conservation that, for example, the U.S. states of Montana, Wyoming, or Colorado enjoy. Instead, bureaucrats in Tokyo or senior academics with government connections tend to have the final say in how to manage Hokkaido's wildlife.
Hunters worry that government experts, most of whom are not hunters and have little or no experience of farming in Hokkaido, have not given enough thought to the entire hunting process, and are simply in a rush to do something – anything – in response to alarming media reports of the so-called bear problem.
Tracking, capturing, killing, and disposing of bears involves a lot of effort if it is to be done safely and avoid harm to other wildlife. There is no quick-fix solution. Nobody I’ve spoken to, including hunters in Hokkaido, takes pleasure in killing a bear. But they are bound by Japanese laws and customs and operate amid growing political concern about the rise in bear-related incidents. They now find themselves trapped – not unlike their prey if Hokkaido authorities get their way.
Eric Johnston is the Senior National Correspondent for the Japan Times. Views expressed within are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Japan Times.
