Bear sightings have fallen sharply across the Tohoku region this autumn, a drop linked to a bumper crop of the trees' favored nuts — but experts warn the lull does not mean the danger is over.
A 59-year-old member of the hunters' association in Kazuno, Akita Prefecture, said he can hardly believe the change from last year. "You don't see bears," he said.
Asiatic black bears move actively in autumn to prepare for hibernation. Last autumn the man headed to culling sites about once every two days, sometimes twice a day.
“It wasn't that I was chasing bears between jobs — it was more like I was doing my job between chasing bears.”the hunter said, member of the Kazuno hunters' association
This autumn, requests for his deployment have all but stopped. In Kazuno, eight men and women in their 20s to 80s were injured in bear attacks between September and November last year. As of Nov. 4 this year, no one has been hurt.
“Last year we were so busy I have no memory of it. This year it feels like we have been idling.”a city official said
September sightings down about 80%
Across the six prefectures of Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Akita, Yamagata and Fukushima, 679 sightings were reported in September, according to preliminary figures. That is about 80% fewer than the 3,286 recorded a year earlier, though changes to how some prefectures count make a direct comparison difficult.
Bear damage was severe across Japan last autumn. According to the environment ministry, eight people died between September and November last year, including people attacked while mushroom picking and someone cleaning an open-air bath.
The nut crop is not the whole explanation. Two years ago was also a bumper year for beechnuts, and bear encounters in Akita still ran high, pointing to other factors behind the numbers.