Local authorities killed a bear that mauled a supermarket employee in Japan after the bruin emerged from the store following a three-day standoff.
On Saturday, a 47-year-old Itoku worker in Akita was taken to the hospital for nonfatal injuries to his face and body after he was attacked by a bear while working in the grocery store’s delicatessen before it opened.
Police sent licensed hunters to take out the bear, but they struggled to find it. They did notice that the bear had consumed large quantities of meat while holed up inside the store.
They set up bear traps at its entrances in hopes that it would eventually wander out, the Kyodo news agency reported.
Three days later, one of the sensors on the trap notified authorities that it had been sprung. Authorities found the bruin snared in a trap that used honey, apples and bread to lure it.
The bear was put to sleep before it was killed, local media reported.
The attack comes as Japan tackles a rising number of encounters between people and bears who are leaving their natural habitat to forage before the winter months.
Authorities have warned residents and recommended that they take extra precautions, even those living in urban city areas. While some bruins are expected to start hibernation soon, authorities warn that others could continue to forage through the winter.
So far, authorities have reported 219 injuries, including six deaths, from bear attacks in nearly half of Japan’s prefectures from March 2023 to March 2024.
Japan’s bear population has been inflating over the past decade, with an estimated 44,000 black bears, nearly triple the recorded 15,000 in 2012.
Hokkaido is excluded from this count, but it is theorized to have just under 12,000 Ussuri brown bears alone, whose population has more than doubled since 1990.
Rural depopulation and inconsistent harvests of bears’ food in their natural habitats have been pointed to as the primary causes of the rising encounters. Experts have pointed to the steady decrease in the number of children in the countryside, who typically were loud enough to ward bears away.
Akita has seen increasing encounters just like many other prefectures. Just last year, one bear mauled several people waiting at a bus stop while another tore off part of a man’s ear in a separate incident.
