In Japan's managed landscape, a struggle to save the bears

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/30/japan-black-bears

 

In Japan's managed landscape, a struggle to save the bears

 

Although it is a heavily urbanised nation, two-thirds of Japan remains

woodlands. Yet many of the forests are timber plantations inhospitable to

wildlife, especially black bears, which are struggling to survive in one of the

most densely populated countries on Earth.

 

In 1990 Kazuhiko Maita set out to capture some bears. Maita, who now directs the

Institute for Asian Black Bear Research and Preservation in Hiroshima

Prefecture, had first been drawn to the powerful animals as a college student in

the 1960s. At that time he had little interest in conservation, and, simply

wanting to study their behavior, spent two decades after graduation tracking

bears for a regional government office in northern Japan. By the 1980s, however,

it was clear that Japanese black bears (Ursus thibetanus japonicus) were in a

state of crisis that persists to this day.

 

" I set out a lot of traps in remote mountain areas, but I only caught two bears

– and I'm a very good bear-catcher, " says Maita, who had hoped to attach radio

tracking devices to the bears' necks and then release them. " I was able to

capture more around small villages. That's when I first realized there were

almost no bears in the deep mountains of Hiroshima. "

 

Maita had come face to face with an odd reality of contemporary Japan. Although

the country is among the most heavily forested nations in the world — despite

its urban image, a surprising 67 percent of Japan remains woodlands — much of

those forests have become uninhabitable for bears and other wildlife. As the

demand for timber in the construction and industrial sectors skyrocketed, the

government subsidized large-scale planting of Japanese cedar and Japanese

cypress plantations. Today, such plantations make up 41 percent of Japan's

forests, and in some prefectures the figure is higher than 60 percent.

 

The outcome, say critics like Mariko Moriyama of the 20,000-member Japan Bear

and Forest Association (JBFA), has been the creation of forests where few

animals can survive. Vast single-species stands of timber lack the plant

diversity found in natural forests, and plant diversity forms the foundation for

animal diversity. Black bears, for example, are omnivorous but prefer to eat

young leaves, insects, berries, and acorns — few of which can be found in

timber plantations.

 

And what natural forest remains has been fragmented by roads and other

development, leaving less and less room for Japan's bears and putting them in

conflict with humans — a clash that is rapidly driving down bear populations.

 

" The results of the experiment are in, " says Moriyama, who founded JBFA after a

career as a middle school science teacher. " Japan's traditional culture

preserved amazing forests up until World War II. Our post-war approach has

failed. "

 

Sixty years of development and urbanization have not only radically changed the

composition of Japan's forests, but have also reshuffled ancient patterns of

land use. With wild forests disappearing, habitat for ordinarily shy mountain

wildlife has shifted closer to villages, causing interaction with humans to

increase. Bears have done serious damage to crops and timber plantations

throughout their range on Honshu, Japan's main island, and Shikoku, the smaller

island that sits to the west of Osaka. While cases of injury and death have been

rare, black bears are increasingly being shot as " nuisance kills " and by sport

hunters, and some isolated populations are nearing extirpation.

 

Even the supposedly healthy populations may not be safe for long: In 2006, a

stunning 4,340 of Japan's black bears were reportedly killed. No one knows how

many black bears live in Japan, but Maita fears the 2006 kills may have

represented up to 60 percent of the entire population.

 

These extraordinary numbers evidence not so much a national hatred for bears as

a failure to plan for the inevitable consequences of development on a small and

crowded island. Despite high rates of urbanization and a proclivity to manicure

nature, the Japanese are as fond of wildlife as any other people, and numerous

efforts to protect bears are underway around the country. Nevertheless, Japan

lacks a comprehensive strategy for managing the bears, boars, and other

creatures that development pushes out of the wild. In this vacuum of knowledge

and planning, black bears in Japan lumber ever-closer to extinction.

 

This crisis in the coexistence of humans and wild animals is a relatively recent

phenomenon. For most of the history of civilization in Japan, the boundary

between bear habitat and human habitat was clearly defined. Bears lived in what

was called okuyama, the deep mountains where humans rarely ventured except to

hunt and cut wood. While overharvesting of timber was a problem as early as the

eighth century, by the 17th century a system of regulations had developed which

averted the wholesale destruction of Japan's forests. The result was that the

okuyama was covered almost entirely in natural forest and was regarded with

fearful respect as the abode of the gods. Rural populations were concentrated in

small farming villages. Between the two was a buffer zone of managed woodland

called satoyama, where villagers collected firewood and cut weeds and grass to

enrich their rice fields, and large mammals rarely strayed.

 

Since World War II, rural depopulation has turned the satoyama wild in many

places while the okuyama has become increasingly domesticated.

 

That black bears survived at all into the 21st century is due largely to Japan's

mountainous geography. Although Honshu and Shikoku don't have large national

parks, some inaccessible mountain areas have remained wild. Japan's black bears

have as a result fared better than many of their species in other Asian

countries like Bangladesh, where bears cling to survival in small remnants of

forest, and China, where demand for bear bile used in traditional Chinese

medicine fuels dangerous levels of poaching. The International Union for the

Conservation of Nature (IUCN) categorizes bears as vulnerable throughout Asia.

 

The exact mechanism of the bears' decline in Japan has varied with location. In

Mie Prefecture, on the Kii Peninsula, artificial plantations make up nearly

two-thirds of all forests and, as is the case nationwide, depressed lumber

prices and rural depopulation have led to widespread neglect of these

plantations. Tree seedlings in Japan are planted close together to shade out

fast-growing weeds. Later, foresters must repeatedly thin the stands.

Insufficient thinning not only produces spindly trees, but leaves the forests

dark and bare of undergrowth that could provide leaves, berries, and acorns for

bears to eat. Still the bears enter these barren woods in search of sustenance.

 

" If you go into the remote plantations around May, the forest actually looks

bright from where bears have stripped the bark off the trees and the white and

red underside is showing, " says Hideyuki Yoshizawa, a 42-year-old forestry

worker in Mie Prefecture. He says bears probably strip the bark to get at a

sweet underlayer that develops in the spring; where the bark is peeled away, the

trunk rots and the timber becomes unusable.

 

In Hiroshima, says Maita, the depopulation of rural villages has played a

greater role.

 

" Before the 1980s, there was a zone between the villages and the mountains where

people cut grass and harvested firewood, " Maita explains. " When people stopped

managing those areas, the trees grew larger and bears and wild boars were able

to live closer to the villages. " Unharvested orchards of chestnuts and

persimmons also drew bears close to houses, where frightened villagers usually

shot or trapped them.

 

Capture-and-release is gaining ground, but in a small country like Japan the

bears are often released so close to their native territories that they return

home.

 

Moriyama, Maita, and other conservationists argue that such half-measures don't

get to the root of the problem.

 

" We need to recreate a place that wild animals can return to, " says Moriyama,

who advocates returning all remote mountain areas to natural forest and limiting

plantations to 30 percent of lowland areas. JBFA actively cuts down conifer

plantations and re-plants them with the broadleaf species that bears favor, and

has also preserved 3,128 acres of threatened old growth-like forest in trusts at

nine locations. (True old growth forest in Japan is extremely rare).

 

That may help restore Japan's natural forests, but the country's ravenous

appetite for timber remains.

 

" If we replaced our current plantation forests with acorn-bearing broadleaf

trees that can barely be used for building houses, we'd have to import an even

larger amount of wood from abroad, " says Tohru Hayami, who owns 2,009 acres of

Forest Stewardship Council-certified Japanese cedar and cypress forest in Mie

Prefecture.

 

Japan already imports over 80 percent of the 100 million cubic meters of timber

it consumes each year, and an estimated 20 percent of that comes from illegally

logged forests, mostly in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Russia. Rather than abandon

its ailing timber industry, Hayami says Japan should manage its plantations so

that wildlife can thrive in them.

 

" I think it's possible to preserve biodiversity while producing timber, and as a

result provide habitat for many animals, including bears, " he says. Thinning is

key to that goal. Hayami leaves about a fifth of the forest canopy open on his

land and avoids cutting undergrowth. He's catalogued over 240 plant species and

many animals, including bears. Nevertheless, he admits that providing habitat

for bears while running a productive timber operation is far from easy: His

remote properties suffer heavy damage from bark-stripping each year. And

sustainably-operated forests like his remain rare in Japan.

 

On the governmental level, Japan is slowly putting more emphasis on biodiversity

conservation and has started to give bears more protection. WWF Japan's Hisashi

Okura says that, in response to studies that showed bears were straying outside

current preserves on Shikoku, one prefecture is expected to approve new

protected areas in the near future.

 

Unfortunately, much of the damage from development and loss of natural forest

has already been done, so creating large, unbroken nature preserves will likely

be impossible. Japan must instead invent ways to protect wildlife even where

wilderness is closely intertwined with developed areas. To do that, improved

research and education are needed, says Yamazaki of the Japan Bear Network.

 

In short, Japan will once again need to redraw its relationship to the natural

world. That won't be easy in a nation that is now overwhelmingly urban and out

of touch with nature, but it may be the only way to ensure a future for Japan's

black bears.