(JP) Public opinion turns against bear hunting

[Guest guest]

South China Morning Post http://www.scmp.com

Wednesday May 16 2001

by Peter Hadfield

 

The hunter had the bear in his sights when he squeezed the trigger. There

was a sharp crack, the bear keeled over, and the hunter rushed forward to

examine his kill.

 

What he found shocked him. Underneath the bear was the body of 81-year-old

Yunosuke Sekiguchi, a hunter who had set out earlier that morning. He had

been mauled by the bear, and suffered severe head injuries.

 

The killing took place near Monbetsu on Japan's northernmost island of

Hokkaido. The prefecture is home to thousands of bears which roam its open

forests, and maulings are not uncommon. Sekiguchi, a steel-plate worker, was

the third person to be killed by a bear in Hokkaido this year.

 

He was one of 11 hunters who set out from Monbetsu that morning looking for

a bear that had been reported in the area. Animal-lovers point out that

usually it is the bears, not the hunters, who come off worse in these

encounters.

 

Despite its industrialisation, Japan is the only country with a sizeable

bear population where the animals can still be hunted. There is a total

population of about 10,000, comprising large brown bears in the north and

smaller black bears in the south. Around 1,400 are killed every year,

according to official figures, but animal welfare groups say the actual

figure is much higher. There are few laws protecting them, and bears can be

hunted and killed for the most trivial of reasons. Spotting one close to a

tourist area is enough to send the local gun club on a bear hunt.

 

Hunters are also allowed to kill a fixed number of bears every year for

sport.

 

Conservationists are concerned that another motive may soon appear: profit.

As the authorities clamp down harder on the trade in endangered species,

supplies of bear bile and bear parts from China are drying up. This has been

a source for traditional medicine shops in Japan.

 

The Government is not about to tighten up regulations at home that would

protect the bears. And until now the public has shown little knowledge of or

interest in the problem.

 

But public apathy could be changing. Last week a small bear was shot in a

tourist spot near Kyoto. Just over a metre tall and weighing 60kg, it

wandered around a park for about four hours until it was killed by hunters.

 

Such shootings are common, but the reaction this time was unusual. Over 100

people lodged complaints with the Kyoto prefectural Government, and many

more protested to newspapers that reported the incident. They wondered why

the authorities had ordered the bear shot when it posed no danger to the

public, instead of tranquillising it and taking it back to the mountains.

 

The authorities had never been confronted with such a reaction, and were

stumped. Even when a cub bear was shot dead a few years ago in the north of

Japan there was barely a murmur.

 

'It took time to obtain permission to use the tranquilliser gun,' a local

government official told the Yomiuri newspaper. 'This bear appeared

frequently. If we had taken it back to the mountain, it would have come down

to the town again.'

 

The local authorities had wanted to use Kyoto Zoo's tranquilliser gun, went

the official explanation, but permission was needed from the police and the

Environment Ministry. That also took time, and anyway it was not considered

a viable option.

 

'We considered that use of the tranquilliser gun was inappropriate, because

even though we had sought permission to use it, there was a possibility that

the bear would escape and put tourists in danger,' said the official.

 

The Government now admits that the approval procedure is cumbersome, and

wants to be able to get its hands on tranquilliser guns more quickly when

they are needed. Environmentalists say shooting small bears is not common

sense.

 

Gifu University's Toshio Tsubota, an expert on bears, said: 'We should

seriously re-examine the procedure for obtaining approval for the use of the

tranquilliser gun.'