Nagano Prefecture

Japan's Nagano Prefecture has a bear coexistence program that offers an alternative to large scale culling through scientific monitoring of bear population. 
Background: Why was the programme needed?
•    The programme was launched in 1995 after authorities recognised that the bear population in the mountainous region of central Honshu, Japan, was declining. 
•    The approach was based on the idea that healthy bear populations can be maintained while reducing dangerous encounters with humans, rather than relying exclusively on culling. 
•    The programme focuses on understanding bear behaviour and managing interactions between humans and bears. 
Capture, Tag and Release
•    Bears that enter areas where they may come into conflict with humans are tranquilised, captured, tagged and released away from human settlements. 
•    Tagging enables researchers to identify and monitor individual animals and understand their movements. 
•    The approach seeks to distinguish between problematic individual bears and the wider bear population, rather than treating all bears as equally dangerous. 
•    By avoiding unnecessary killing, the programme aims to allow more bears to survive their natural lifespan and maintain a viable population. 
Preventing Human–Bear Encounters
Fencing
•    More than 3,000 km of fencing has been installed near farms, towns and rivers to reduce opportunities for bears to enter human-dominated areas. 
•    Physical barriers therefore form an important part of the strategy by preventing encounters before they occur. 
Bear dogs
•    Specially trained Karelian bear dogs were used to scare bears away from areas where they posed a potential risk to humans. 
•    This approach seeks to modify bear behaviour and discourage them from approaching human settlements without killing the animals. 
•    The bear-dog programme in the buffer zone has subsequently been halted, showing that individual components of coexistence strategies may change according to circumstances. 
Public awareness
•    Community education is another important component of the programme. 
•    People are taught to keep food away from bears, maintain a safe distance and understand bear behaviour. 
•    School-level awareness programmes help reduce fear while teaching children how to behave safely in bear habitats. 
Why are Bear–Human Conflicts Increasing?
•    Food availability varies naturally, including fluctuations in the availability of acorns and other forest foods, which can influence bear movements. 
•    Climate change may contribute indirectly by affecting the availability and distribution of natural food sources. 
•    Rural depopulation and urbanisation have reduced human management of forests, farmland and buffer zones. 
•    Abandoned fruit trees, particularly unharvested persimmons, can attract bears towards settlements. 
•    The problem is therefore not necessarily that bears have become more aggressive, but that changes in landscapes and food availability are bringing them into greater contact with people. 
Coexistence versus Culling
•    Japan has increasingly relied on culling to respond to rising bear encounters and attacks, with a record number of bears reportedly killed in recent years. 
•    The Nagano approach offers an alternative based on selective intervention, monitoring, prevention and coexistence. 
•    The underlying principle is that not every bear needs to be removed simply because bears are present near human settlements. 
•    Greater emphasis is placed on identifying and managing individual problem bears and high-risk locations. 
•    This approach attempts to balance two objectives: human safety and long-term conservation of viable bear populations. 
Evidence from Nagano
•    The coexistence programme has been associated with a recovery in bear numbers, although accurately estimating bear populations remains difficult. 
•    Annual bear sightings in Nagano have remained broadly stable at around 1,400 in recent years, while some northern prefectures have experienced sharper increases. 
•    Nagano recorded 11 bear-related incidents, including one death, in the cited year, compared with substantially higher numbers in some northern prefectures. 
•    These figures suggest that population conservation and conflict reduction need not necessarily be mutually exclusive, although direct comparisons between prefectures must be treated cautiously because ecological and demographic conditions differ. 
Limitations and Current Challenges
•    The coexistence model faces a major challenge because bear attacks have increased in several parts of Japan, generating strong public pressure for immediate removal of dangerous animals. 
•    Nagano has also increased its permitted culling limit, indicating that coexistence measures do not completely eliminate the need for lethal control in high-risk situations. 
•    The bear-dog programme has been discontinued in some areas, while scientific capture-and-release activities have become more limited. 
•    The approach therefore cannot be understood as “never cull bears”, but rather as an attempt to use non-lethal measures wherever they can effectively manage the risk.