Latest news with #hunters
NHK
23-07-2025
- NHK
Hokkaido town installs high-performance cameras to detect brown bears
A town in Japan's northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido has begun installing high-performance cameras to detect the appearance of brown bears nearly in real time. A newspaper delivery man was killed by a brown bear in Fukushima Town on July 12. That bear was shot dead, but brown bears have often been seen rummaging through garbage in residential areas. The town installed 11 surveillance cameras after the man's death. On Wednesday, workers began setting up five high-performance cameras with cooperation from a major telecom firm. Two of the cameras were set under a bridge in the Hikura district, where a brown bear was caught in a trap earlier on Wednesday. The district is adjacent to where the fatal attack occurred. The new cameras can film at night using infrared. They can detect moving objects at a distance of up to about 25 meters, and send the images by email almost in real time to town officials. Fukushima Town officials say they will be able to keep residents safe by detecting bears early, and quickly notifying hunters.
Wall Street Journal
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
How to Catch a Wily Poacher in a Sting: A Thermal Robotic Deer
Brian Wolslegel's remote-controlled animals can wiggle their ears, move their legs and, in some cases, poop. These deer, bears and coyotes aren't country-fair booth decoys. His lifelike robotics are the centerpiece of sting operations to nab illegal hunters around the U.S.
NHK
18-07-2025
- NHK
Bear shot dead in Hokkaido town near site of fatal attack
Local officials have shot dead a bear in a northern Japanese town where a man was killed in a bear attack last week. Police are investigating whether the bear is the one that attacked the man. Police say they received a report from a resident in Fukushima Town, Hokkaido, saying a bear was sighted in the town's Tsukisaki area at around 2 a.m. on Friday. Police officers and hunters rushed to the scene and spotted a brown bear about 1.5 meters tall. The hunters reportedly shot the animal dead at around 3:30 a.m. On July 12, a 52-year-old newspaper delivery man was fatally mauled. The place where he was found dead was about 800 meters away from the spot of the latest sighting. A number of bear sightings have been reported in the town. Experts also found large and small paw prints resembling those of brown bears.
CBS News
17-07-2025
- General
- CBS News
Pittsburgh expanding deer culling program to more parks
Pittsburgh is expanding its deer culling program to several more parks in an attempt to get the population under control. Since 2023, the city of Pittsburgh has hired archers to kill deer during specific time periods throughout the year. Last year, 199 deer were taken out. But the city says the deer population is "still uncontrolled." So this year the city is looking for 65 more archers and expanding to other parks. "When we're talking overpopulation, you can see it in our trails, when you look at the native vegetation. The deer have completely depleted our native plant life," said Pittsburgh public information officer Eliza Durham. An increase in car and deer collisions is also a problem. Last year, Schenley, Emerald View, Highland, Frick and Riverview parks had hunters. This year, four more are being added: Hays Woods, Hazelwood Greenway, South Side Park and Beechview-Seldom Seen Greenway. The deer have no natural predators to naturally reduce the population, so the archers are being brought in again this year. "(The deer are) now resorting to, which homeowners might notice, going into people's gardens," Durham. This year's archery program begins on Sept. 20. But you only have until Sunday to apply.
The Guardian
16-07-2025
- The Guardian
Hunter missing in Japan as spate of bear attacks triggers emergency to be declared in northern town
Authorities in Japan are searching for a hunter who went missing on a mountain in Hokkaido near where a brown bear was recently spotted, amid a spate of deadly attacks by the animals that has triggered the declaration of a bear emergency in one town. The hunter was reported missing by a friend on Mt Esan on Tuesday afternoon in the northern island of Hokkaido after he failed to return home. A rifle believed to belong to the missing man was found on the side of a mountain road, and bloodstains were discovered nearby. A large brown bear was seen near the road on Saturday. Also on Saturday, a newspaper delivery man was fatally mauled in the town of Fukushima, about 120km away. Kenju Sato, 52, was repeatedly bitten by a bear and dragged about 100 metres into bushes, where his body was found a few hours later. Neighbours who heard his cries attempted unsuccessfully to scare the creature off. Local authorities declared a month-long brown bear emergency for the town, the first of its kind to be issued, with police, fire fighters and hunters running patrols 24 hours a day. The bear in Fukushima was reported to be about 1.5 metres in length, smaller than the one spotted around Mt. Esan. Multiple bear attacks have also been reported in Japan's main island of Honshu this month. An 81-year-old woman was killed on 4 July by a black bear in Iwate prefecture in northeast Japan while two elderly women were attacked in separate incidents on Tuesday morning, one in the northern Aomori prefecture and the other near the ancient capital of Nara, hundreds of kilometres to the south. Experts have attributed the rise in attacks in recent years to a scarcity of acorns and other staples of the ursine diet – a problem some experts have attributed to the climate crisis. They have also been encouraged to travel further afield by depopulation in rural communities and the resulting increase in abandoned farmland. After a record 219 injuries and fatalities in the previous fiscal year, serious incidents fell sharply in the year to March 2025, possibly due to food being more plentiful than in previous years. However, a recent report by Tohoku's regional forest office, which covers five northern prefectures, has predicted an extremely poor harvest of beechnuts, a staple bear food, this autumn, raising fears that hunger will drive more of the animals into residential areas in search of nourishment. Authorities are urging residents in the region not to dispose of food waste outside their homes to avoid attracting the creatures. Hokkaido's Ussuri brown bears can grow up to 3 metres and exceed 500kg. The Asiatic black bears found elsewhere in Japan are rarely larger than 1.5 metres and 150kg but can still kill humans. In response to the increasing numbers of bear encounters in residential areas, the government in April relaxed its strict hunting laws to allow bears to be shot in urban areas, allowing municipalities to authorise 'emergency shootings' if there is a threat to human life.
