Supermarket staff in Akita, Japan, were forced to abandon their store on Saturday morning when a bear broke into the premises, attacked an employee and raided the meat counter. The 1-metre Asiatic black bear was only captured after a two-day standoff with police, lured into a trap filled with honey.
Japan has seen a surge in bear attacks recently, as increasing numbers of the country’s largest mammals invade urban areas in search of food, causing injuries to hundreds each year. In response, authorities have culled 9000 bears in the year to April, with six people losing their lives to bear attacks during the same period.
Armed police, equipped with tactical gear and riot shields, responded to the incident, which occurred around 8am at the start of the weekend while the supermarket’s 20 employees were preparing for the day. Officials reported that a 47-year-old male deli worker was mauled in the incident, sustaining non-life-threatening injuries to his head and face.
However, for the next 45 hours following the bear’s invasion, police were unable to locate the bear as it roamed within the large supermarket in Japan’s northeast, feasting on the contents of the meat counter. In response, frustrated officers set up two large cages around the Itoku Tsuchizakiminato store, while unsuccessfully attempting to locate the bear with drones.
The usually tranquil town of Akita was rocked by a dramatic standoff outside a local supermarket, leaving residents and business owners in disbelief. A sushi restaurant owner expressed his astonishment to reporters: “I’ve been running my restaurant for over 45 years, so I’d never really thought about a bear coming in, but it was still quite a shock.”
After deploying drones to locate the bear inside the store, police sealed off parts of the building, corralling the animal towards traps baited with “rice bran, bananas, apples, and bread, all coated with honey.”
In the early hours of Monday, as an injured deli worker recovered in hospital from head wounds, police received notification that their trap had been sprung.
The captured one-metre Asiatic black bear was tranquillised and removed by truck for extermination, as reported by Kyodo News, although it remains unconfirmed whether this was the same bear previously spotted on CCTV near the scene.
Residents across the Akita Prefecture and beyond in Japan are on high alert after a spate of bear sightings have prompted officials to warn people about venturing outside at night, as bears get ready for hibernation. The nation has recorded its highest-ever number of bear attack victims since statistics were first collected in 2006, with over 200 individuals suffering injuries this past year alone.
Last year’s string of attacks in the urban heart of Akita city saw a man losing an ear in his garage and others being mauled while waiting for a bus by a wandering bear desperate for food. The Guardian has reportws a remarkable revival of the Asiatic black bear population – from 15,000 in 2012 to 44,000 now – largely due to rural depopulation as young people move towards cities leaving perfect bear territory behind.
Bear specialist Satō Yoshikazu of Rakunō Gakuen University told the Nippon: “Since 2000, there have been numerous incidents of bears entering urban areas close to human habitations.
“Acorns and other nuts form an important part of the bears’ diet in the autumn months, and availability of these foods tends to follow a rough cycle of good years and bad. Sometimes, there’s a poor crop of multiple species of acorns and other tree nuts in the same year. When this happens, bears are more likely to stray into villages and towns in search of food.”