Comments on Bear and Deer Management in Shiretoko World Heritage site
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2019 21:08:44 +0900
Dear WG members
I heard that the vegetation on the Rausu side showed a certain recovery. I am much impressed because I recommended the necessity the population control experiment of deer in the heritage site in 2005. At that time, the choice of no-control was supported by the majority of the scientists. The choice should defenitely be determined by the society, but the fate should have been quite different.
It would be impossible to make major changes to the draft plan only with a 3-hour conference. In the old days, discussions were advanced deeply by emails in before and after the meetings. It may be better to decide on the policy for the next fiscal year at the second meeting in autumn, but if we look at the results of last year's survey and plan for the next fiscal year, measures will be delayed by one year. The document was released 5 days before, we could discuss it before the meeting.
As for the brown bear, it is obvious that the quantitative goals have not been achieved, and have even deteriorated, despite of the fact that we paid many efforts for monitoring and countermeasures. It is the "results" that appear in the newspaper that the Ministry of the Environment accepted the research project to evaluate population size of bears, but no improvement about human-bear confict has to be done. Even if we control human behavior, the number of bears will continue to increase and bears will not be afraid of people (even in Sapporo, even in similar situations it is ineffective). The reason I did zoning was to provide the means to effectively control the behavior of people in bear-first places (core area of national parks and others), and to remove the bears without hesitation in human-first places (towns, farms, etc.), so as to aim for the coexistence of both people and bears. Neither of them has worked, and the bear-first place extends beyond the heritage area. (This is choosed by the local community, but I think that the confict has increased and will increase more.)
About two years ago, the Shiretoko Foundation had been forced to chace out or cull bears beyond their working limit. If they chace bears that appears first time, and do not chase them until they decide to cull them. Chasing is not effective to regulate bears behaviors. I did not know any difference in zones in such responses. I did not hear the word "adaptive management" but originally I said the countermeasures to bears depend on the total number of bears and the number of bad bears that do not escape from people. Therefore, unlike deer, we need to monitor both the total number of bears and the number of "bad bears", and that number has been monitored in Donan (South Hokkaido). I think we can monitor the number of "bad bears" in Shireto, but it has not been written in the management plan.
From 2005 to the present, the number of deer has been greatly reduced. We must publish an article on this success of population control. You can see that the goal of the vegetation recovery (especially the renewal of saplings) has not been achieved yet, but I think that the current measures are less effective. I also think that there is a way to quit shooting and hunting for about 2 years (or 1 year).
It is unfortunate to say that relying on game hunting is currently at risk of accidental fire to kill a forest ranger. It would be much safer to aim at a system in which people from the Ministry of the Environment and Forestry Agency perform gun hunting by themselves. In that sense, I deeply appreciate the Shiretoko Foundation. I even think that the development of the Shiretoko Foundation holds the fortune of natural park management throughout Japan.
I heard that the vegetation on the Rausu side showed a certain recovery. I am much impressed because I recommended the necessity the population control experiment of deer in the heritage site in 2005. At that time, the choice of no-control was supported by the majority of the scientists. The choice should defenitely be determined by the society, but the fate should have been quite different.
It would be impossible to make major changes to the draft plan only with a 3-hour conference. In the old days, discussions were advanced deeply by emails in before and after the meetings. It may be better to decide on the policy for the next fiscal year at the second meeting in autumn, but if we look at the results of last year's survey and plan for the next fiscal year, measures will be delayed by one year. The document was released 5 days before, we could discuss it before the meeting.
As for the brown bear, it is obvious that the quantitative goals have not been achieved, and have even deteriorated, despite of the fact that we paid many efforts for monitoring and countermeasures. It is the "results" that appear in the newspaper that the Ministry of the Environment accepted the research project to evaluate population size of bears, but no improvement about human-bear confict has to be done. Even if we control human behavior, the number of bears will continue to increase and bears will not be afraid of people (even in Sapporo, even in similar situations it is ineffective). The reason I did zoning was to provide the means to effectively control the behavior of people in bear-first places (core area of national parks and others), and to remove the bears without hesitation in human-first places (towns, farms, etc.), so as to aim for the coexistence of both people and bears. Neither of them has worked, and the bear-first place extends beyond the heritage area. (This is choosed by the local community, but I think that the confict has increased and will increase more.)
About two years ago, the Shiretoko Foundation had been forced to chace out or cull bears beyond their working limit. If they chace bears that appears first time, and do not chase them until they decide to cull them. Chasing is not effective to regulate bears behaviors. I did not know any difference in zones in such responses. I did not hear the word "adaptive management" but originally I said the countermeasures to bears depend on the total number of bears and the number of bad bears that do not escape from people. Therefore, unlike deer, we need to monitor both the total number of bears and the number of "bad bears", and that number has been monitored in Donan (South Hokkaido). I think we can monitor the number of "bad bears" in Shireto, but it has not been written in the management plan.
From 2005 to the present, the number of deer has been greatly reduced. We must publish an article on this success of population control. You can see that the goal of the vegetation recovery (especially the renewal of saplings) has not been achieved yet, but I think that the current measures are less effective. I also think that there is a way to quit shooting and hunting for about 2 years (or 1 year).
It is unfortunate to say that relying on game hunting is currently at risk of accidental fire to kill a forest ranger. It would be much safer to aim at a system in which people from the Ministry of the Environment and Forestry Agency perform gun hunting by themselves. In that sense, I deeply appreciate the Shiretoko Foundation. I even think that the development of the Shiretoko Foundation holds the fortune of natural park management throughout Japan.
posted by Hiroyuki Matsuda @ 9:22 AM
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