The public in Japan continue to suffer serious damage from wild animals.

This requires a need to take immediate preventive measures and, in the longer term, seek to foster an environment that would allow wildlife to coexist with humans.

Recent years have seen a succession of bear attacks on humans in the mountains and residential areas. The levels of human casualties from bears this fiscal year are the worst on record.

The Environment Ministry has started discussions on adding bears to the list of its “designated wildlife species for control,” which are eligible for government subsidies for capture and culling.

Damage from sika deer and wild boars, which are already on the list, is also greatly affecting farm crops, transportation and other aspects of human life.

Farm ministry figures show that wildlife caused 15.5 billion yen ($104 million) in damage to farm crops in fiscal 2021, even though the figure is on a decreasing trend.

Transport ministry officials said that animals disrupted transportation in 1,393 cases in fiscal 2022, such as passenger trains being delayed by 30 minutes or more, about 10 times the corresponding levels more than 10 years ago.

Some wild animals collide with cars. Others negatively impact ecosystems in the mountains, where they nibble on standing trees and graze on alpine plants. A loss of vegetation on a sidehill could cause it to collapse.

The habitat areas of sika deer approximately tripled, and those of wild boar approximately doubled, during a recent 40-year period due to factors including depopulation, falling hunter numbers and global warming.

The environment and farm ministries set the target, in fiscal 2013, of halving the population of sika deer and wild boars in 10 years.

The wild boar population fell from 1.21 million to 720,000 over a decade through fiscal 2021, partly because of classical swine fever.

But the number of deer dropped only slightly from 2.33 million to 2.22 million during the same period.

The target date for halving the deer population was extended for five years in September because it appears anything but likely the target will be achieved by fiscal 2023.

There are fewer holders of gun-hunting licenses and there could be fewer skilled hunters in the years to come.

Measures that could be taken to have more wild animals culled include subsidizing expenses for culling them and using information and communication technologies to improve efficiency.

There is also a need to have local governments work together in prefectural border areas and to train hunters and other catchers of wild animals.

It is also essential to help have wild game served as meat so the lives of animals will not be wasted. That said, it is not always possible to have it served as meat, such as when the animals are killed high in the mountains.

Damage reduction, in the first place, is the principal goal of animal culling. Thought should go first as to how the livelihoods of local community residents can be protected and how ecosystems can be preserved.

Urbanites, who are in various manners not unaffected by the circumstances, should also take an interest in the matter and have a deeper understanding of the damage reduction measures being taken.

Humans, at the same time, should make efforts, on their part, to reduce factors that are prompting wild animals to frequent livelihood zones.

Raw garbage uncollected on farms, and persimmon and chestnut trees left unattended, attract wildlife to human settlements.

The wild animals and humans have come closer to each other, as more afforested areas and farmlands have become abandoned and woodland areas have been left uncared-for, giving the animals more to feed on and new places to hide in.

We should do what little we can do in our close surroundings to reduce elements that could attract wildlife, such as by cutting down unharvested fruit trees.

How to preserve ecosystems and seek a coexistence with wild animals are questions of how we wish to manage our homeland.

–The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 26