As climate change drives more and more Japanese bears into residential areas, the country’s human population is struggling to address the issue. Veuer’s Matt Hoffman reports.
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00:00For Japan, an old threat is becoming newly challenging. Bears.
00:04Climate change has been disrupting the animals' usual food sources,
00:08causing them to more frequently encroach upon residential areas.
00:11And the human populations in those areas are shrinking as Japanese people
00:15concentrate more and more in large cities.
00:18The country has traditionally relied on bear hunters to address the problem.
00:21But hunters, and gun owners generally, tend to be older.
00:25This is hunter Tatsuhito Yamagishi.
00:27He's 72 and says they say we should train new hunters,
00:30but there's nothing specific on how we should do this.
00:33In a few years' time, when we are all over 70 years old,
00:36will there even be anybody left who could teach people how to hunt bears,
00:39even if they wanted to?
00:40According to the BBC, the government is planning to loosen restrictions
00:44on when hunters can shoot at bears in residential areas.
00:47But some hunters say such a reform could leave accountability
00:50for the consequences ambiguous.
00:52Another option is this animatronic monster wolf robot
00:55developed by the company Wolf Kamoi.
00:58It can be used to scare bears away.
01:00This is an issue which is likely to only get more urgent.
01:03From April 2023 to March 2024, 219 people were attacked by bears in Japan,
01:09six fatally.
01:10And according to CNN, just this past weekend,
01:12a bear wandered into a supermarket in Akita City and couldn't be removed for two days.