Japan Govt Draws Up Bear Crisis Measures

Tokyo, Nov. 14 (Jiji Press)–The Japanese government compiled Friday a package of measures to cope with the ongoing bear crisis including emergency culling by police with rifles and cooperation from former police officers and Self-Defense Forces members. The package, adopted at a meeting of relevant cabinet ministers at the prime minister’s office in Tokyo, also urges the central government to substantially increase local tax grants in the current fiscal year ending next March so local governments can enhance their efforts to get rid of wild bears from human territory, by paying higher per-capture rewards for hunters, procure more cage traps and set up buffer zones and fences to block their entry into residential areas. Furthermore, it calls for nurturing in the medium term the so-called government hunters–local government officials with a hunting license ready to bag bears. At the meeting, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara asked the member ministers to work out by the end of fiscal 2025 a road map setting region-by-region numerical bear-hunting targets. “We will curb the excessively expanded bear population to realize habitat segregation,” Environment Minister Hirotaka Ishihara said. As of the end of October, the fiscal 2025 death toll from bear attacks in Japan had risen to a record high of 12, with the number of injured people having matched the all-time high, marked in fiscal 2023, as of Sept. 30. “The situation seriously threatens public safety,” Kihara noted. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]