Japan is rushing to hire retired police officers to combat bears as the archipelago faces a record number of deadly attacks this year, a senior government official said Friday.
Government Secretary-General Minoru Kihara chaired a special ministerial meeting that approved a series of measures that envisage the use of former police officers, soldiers and other personnel with experience handling firearms in efforts to control bear populations.
Since April, bear attacks have killed 13 people (more than double last year and a record since statistics existed) and injured more than 100 people.
The plan adopted by the government this Friday “aims to keep bears away from residential areas, strengthen hunting operations and reduce the overpopulation of bears,” Kihara declared at a press conference.
Incidents are reported almost daily, with bears roaming residential areas, breaking into homes, destroying supermarkets and even approaching schools, causing panic, especially in the northeastern Akita and Iwate prefectures where most of the attacks occur.
Some municipalities have already deployed riot police to assist local hunters tasked with capturing and killing bears.
Japanese agents with rifles will also be allowed to shoot bears starting Thursday, as strict restrictions on firearms in Japan are eased.
Army troops have also been deployed in two northeastern states since last week, but the soldiers are unarmed. Equipped with bear spray, batons, shields, goggles, bulletproof vests, and net launchers, they are useful for bear trapping, hunting, and transporting captured animals.
The increase in human encounters with bears reflects climate change and unbalanced environmental impacts. Experts say the low supply of oak fruit, the bear’s food source, is causing the population of these mammals to grow and move closer to cities in search of food.
Researchers say the decline in rural populations has also erased traditional boundaries between cities and bear habitat, encouraging bears to expand into residential areas. At the same time, authorities realized that the aging hunting population on which they depended was reaching its limits.
Asian black bears live in most parts of the country and can weigh up to 300 pounds. Brown bears, which live on the northern island of Hokkaido, can weigh up to 400 kg.
This is not the first time Japan has sent troops to exterminate wild animals. The Army provided aerial surveillance for wild deer hunting about a decade ago and shot sea lions to protect fisheries in the 1960s.
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