The Environment Ministry will begin surveying bear populations in Japan’s northeastern Tohoku region and vicinity in June by setting up about 800 cameras in mountains, it said earlier this week, following a surge in bear attacks on humans.
Camera traps and other means will be used to help count black bears in the six prefectures of Aomori, Akita, Iwate, Yamagata, Miyagi and Fukushima — collectively known as Tohoku — as well as adjacent Niigata, with the estimates to be released possibly by early next year.
The survey plan was revealed as Japan saw a record high number of 238 people injured or killed by bear attacks in the year through March.
It was reported at a recent meeting of ministers on measures against bears that more of the animals were spotted in Tohoku in April than in the same month last year.
The ministry said it will conduct surveys in other areas of Japan in fiscal 2027.
Regarding a survey in the northern island of Hokkaido, inhabited by brown bears, the ministry plans to mainly use a method of collecting body hair to count and estimate their numbers.
The ministry also plans to survey the tiny population of black bears on Shikoku, in western Japan, but no research is planned for the adjacent island of Kyushu, where the animals are believed to have gone extinct.
According to government data, there are currently estimated to be more than 19,000 black bears in the Tohoku region and 11,600 brown bears in Hokkaido.
© KYODO
