On October 19, police in Akita prefecture said bears attacked six people, including several students, in Kita-Akita city in the prefecture.
The attacks began at around 6:40 a.m. on October 19, when four female victims were mauled by bears over a period of 40 minutes, causing head and facial injuries and requiring hospitalization, according to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper on October 20.
One of the victims, an 83-year-old woman, had to be rushed by helicopter to hospital because of severe injuries that caused excessive blood loss.
About 20 minutes after the attack, a bear appeared at a bus stop and bit the hand of a female student waiting for a bus to school.
The three attacks occurred in a commercial district near JR Takanosu station, which is packed with shops, homes and hospitals.
Later that day, a 14-year-old girl was attacked while walking home from school. She suffered head, neck and knee injuries.
In Iwate Prefecture near Akita Prefecture, a man and a woman were attacked by a bear while picking mushrooms, and the woman died.
According to NHK, at least 152 people have been injured, including killed, by bears since April. The incidents have been reported in 17 of Japan's 47 prefectures, and the number of attacks is increasing faster than ever.
A member of the bear attack response task force in Toyama prefecture said the number of bears leaving the mountains for lower areas is increasing due to food shortages.
Meanwhile, in Hokkaido, Kevin Short, a naturalist and professor of anthropology at the Tokyo University of Information Sciences, said the main reason for the increase in human-bear confrontations could be that the bear population in Hokkaido has recovered from years of overhunting, and there are now fewer bear hunters. According to Short, the reduced hunting has led to an increase in bears, suggesting that they are no longer afraid of humans and are venturing closer to populated areas.
Faced with this situation, the Japanese Ministry of the Environment has launched a pilot program from January 2023, promoting connections between local governments, police forces and hunting organizations to create the ability to respond quickly and take action by capturing or destroying bears when they are detected.
Minh Hoa (reported by Thanh Nien, Tuoi Tre)
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