Bears kill 1 person, injure 4 in Japan as record number of deadly attacks continues to rise

Separate bear attacks in Japan killed one and injured four on Friday, officials said, days after the government vowed to toughen measures because of a record year of deadly assaults by the animals.

Before Friday’s attacks, bears had killed a record nine people this year, surpassing the previous high of six in the fiscal year that ended in March 2024.

The animal has been increasingly encroaching into Japan’s towns due to factors ranging from a declining human population to climate change.

In a mountainous village in the northern region of Akita, police received a report of a bear mauling on Friday involving four people.

“One died and three are being treated at a hospital” after the attack, a local police officer told AFP.

Public broadcaster NHK and other local media reported that two of those hurt were doing farm work at the time of the attack, while the other two were injured as they went to help.

A local hunter reportedly killed a bear nearby, and police are investigating if it is the one that attacked the four.

In a separate incident in central Toyama region, an official told AFP “a woman in her 70s was injured in a bear attack” on Friday.

This week Japan’s new environment minister vowed to get tough on bears, calling the attacks “a serious problem.”

“We are committed to further strengthening various measures including securing and training government hunters and managing the bear population,” the minister said.  

In one of the previous fatal attacks, a 60-year-old went missing earlier this month while cleaning an open-air bath in northern Iwate prefecture, an environment ministry official told AFP.

Bears have attacked tourists, entered stores and appeared near schools and parks, particularly in northern regions. In August, a hiker in northern Japan tried to fight off a bear but was pulled into the nearby woods where he was found dead.

Japan has two types of bear: Asian black bears — also known as moon bears — and the bigger brown bears that live on the main northern island of Hokkaido.

Thousands of bears are shot every year.

The impacts of climate change on the bears’ food sources and hibernation cycles has been cited by experts as a key factor, but there are also implications as Japan’s aging population shrinks and humans abandon more rural areas.

That depopulation has left bears “a chance to expand their range,” biologist Koji Yamazaki, from Tokyo University of Agriculture, told CBS News‘ Elizabeth Palmer in 2023.