AFP, TOKYO
A bear that rampaged through a Japanese supermarket for two days was lured out with food coated in honey, trapped and due to be killed yesterday, local officials said.
Japan has a growing problem with bears, with a record six human fatalities from attacks and more than 9,000 of the animals killed in the past year.
In the latest incident, police received an emergency call early on Saturday that a bear had wounded a 47-year-old man in a supermarket in Akita, on Japan’s main island of Honshu.
A captured Asian black bear is inspected near the resort town of Karuizawa, Japan, on Nov. 14, 2019.
Photo: AFP / Picchio Wildlife Research Center
A gash on the man’s head “will take at least a week to heal once his stitches get removed, according to a doctor,” a police spokesman said.
The supermarket was evacuated with the animal left inside, where it laid waste to the meat department, the Asahi Shimbun reported.
Finally early yesterday, the bear walked into a trap containing “rice bran, bananas, apples and bread, all coated with honey,” an Akita official said. “We prepared two traps, and one of them captured the bear on the backyard side of the supermarket.”
The animal was due to be killed later yesterday, the police spokesman said.
Human fatalities from bears in the year to March 31 included an elderly woman attacked in her garden and a fisherman whose severed head was found by a lake.
The period had the highest number of deaths since the Japanese government started collecting data from 2006 to 2007. More than 200 other people were involved in incidents with bears.
Three other people have been killed since March 31.
Experts say the dwindling human population in rural areas of Japan is causing hungry bears to come closer to villages and towns.
Other factors include climate change affecting the omnivores’ food supply and their hibernation times. This summer tied for Japan’s warmest on record.
Japanese media have reported that authorities are having problems finding enough hunters to shoot the animals, citing Japan’s declining and aging population.
