Japan's black bears 'face extinction'

An Asiatic black bear
An Asiatic black bear. Photograph: Greg Baker/AP

Conservationists warned today that Japan's population of Asiatic black bears faces extinction following a record number of killings of bears that strayed into towns and villages in search of food.

Between April and November last year 4,251 black bears - between 30 and 50% of the total population - were killed because they were considered a threat to human safety and crops, the environment ministry said.

The cull has prompted the ministry to urge hunters to show restraint amid fears that the population has reached dangerously low levels.

Experts say a meagre supply of acorns and other nuts last autumn drove an unusually large number of Japan's black bears into populated areas to forage for food. The previous year an abundant crop prompted a rise in the number of bear cubs, leaving adults with more young mouths to feed.

"Bears need to stock up on food before they hibernate in the winter, which is one of the main reasons why so many have been spotted in towns and villages," Makoto Asano of the Japan Bear Network told the Guardian.

Experts also believe that a decline in the number of hunters - from about half a million in the 1970s to about 150,000 in 2005 - means that bears no longer associate humans with danger.

The bears, which can grow up to 1.5m (5 ft) in height and weigh up to 100kg (220 lbs), have killed three people and injured 136 others, leaving officials unsure about how to strike a balance between conservation and public safety.

Hunting "dangerous" bears is legal, and locally set limits on the size of the cull carry no legal weight and are routinely ignored.

Sports hunters who at this time of the year would normally head to the mountains say there are not enough bears left in some areas to warrant an organised hunt.

"We killed too many bears that were thought to be harmful over the past year," Hideki Koumo, a member of a hunting association in Niigata prefecture told the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. "I don't think there are any bears left in these mountains."

Mr Asano, an assistant professor at Gifu University, said deforestation and an ageing rural human population were also to blame.

"In the past villagers grew crops on nearby foothills, but now their number has dwindled and those areas have become the bears' territory," he said. "It means that bears and humans are physically closer than ever."

Sports hunters prize the black bear for the bile from its gall bladder, which is used in traditional Chinese medicine.

The government has asked hunters not to kill for sport this spring to give the bear population time to recover, but few believe the measure will have much impact. Bears reproductive cycles are slower than those of many other wild animals, with females giving birth to only one or two cubs every two to three years.

The last nationwide survey, conducted in 1991, put the number of bears at between 8,400 and 12,600, but some conservationists believe the total was closer to 15,000.

Mr Asano believes that as long as the destruction of the bears' deciduous mountain forest habitat also continues, humans will have to get used to having them as close neighbours.

"The policy must be not to kill the bears but to improve their natural habitat and encourage them to return deeper into the mountains," he said.

"But reports of attacks on humans have led people to believe that bears are a threat and should be destroyed. If that attitude persists then extinction can't be too far away."

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