Japan’s first bear park opened,
inside a national park, at Noboribetsu
in 1956. This park is set up in the
way to make the maximum profit possible
with the minimum operating cost.
Bear cubs, orphaned as a result of
spring ‘pest control’, given to or
purchased by the park with small
amounts, are used for public attraction,
with which the park makes profit.
Leftover food at nearby hotels and
hospitals is given for free to feed
bears. Bears are not fed during the
day so they stay hungry and visitors
are encouraged to buy bear food to
feed them, and starving bears would
beg for food, which visitors find
cute. Some visitors also find their
fighting, caused by stress resulting
from being kept in overcrowded conditions,
amusing. New bear cubs are born every
year as there is no breeding control
and surplus individuals are sold
for meat or gall bladders. Once solid
enclosures of concrete have been
built, it does not cost much to keep
bears in them.
Other bear parks followed suit and
there are currently eight such bear
parks in Japan; Noboribetsu, Showa
Shinzan, Jouzankei, Kamikawa in Hokkaido,
Ani and Hachimandaira in Akita, Okuhida
in Gifu, and Aso in Kumamoto. Noboribetsu,
Aso, and Hachimandaira are located
in national parks. A lot of package
tours and school trips include a
visit to those parks in their itinerary.
Recently increasing number of tourists
are visiting from Korea and Taiwan
as well.
In 1991, the World Society for the
Protection of Animals (WSPA) investigated
and exposed the inhumane conditions
in which bears were kept at Noboribetsu
as well as their slaughtering bears
at a nearby wildlife abattoir and
selling the gall bladders. Also some
young cubs were sold alive to bear
farms in Korea. As this exposure
coincided with the Kyoto meeting
of CITES, WSPA’s report prompted
international protest and as a result
Noboribetsu and Aso allegedly stopped
gall bladder trade. Still, since
there is no effective legal restriction
on zoos and animal dealers in Japan,
it is hard to obtain sufficient information
of the conditions of those bear parks.
This is why the relevant laws and
annexed standards need to be improved
urgently.
Japan’s bear issues include sport
hunting and pest control, commercial
trade, and care and management of
captured individuals, which require
integrated approach that involves
many areas of social structure.
Protection of
Bears and Relevant Laws
There are three animal-protection-related
laws, all of which are relevant to
the bear issues.
Wildlife Protection Law
Every year as many as 1,500 wild
bears are hunted either as game or
as pests.
'Wildlife Protection and Hunting
Law’, which regulates hunting of
wildlife and pest control, permits
elimination of this many individuals
from the already dwindling population
of Japanese bears.
Bears are game animals except in
the western Japan and they are also
culled as pests for they cause agricultural
damage or hurt or kill someone.
Preventive pest control, in which
bears are culled when no damage has
been done but because a possibility
exists that they might, is also permitted.
This law needs to be revised
as follows.
·Banning of sport hunting of bears
that are endangered.
·Strengthening appropriate measures
to prevent agricultural and other
damages caused by bears.
·Monitoring pest control of bears
to detect false claims of damage
for the purpose of obtaining gall
bladder, bear meat, or bear skin.
·Banning of snare traps, which injures
and kills unintended wild or domestic
animals as well as bears.
·Training experts who work specifically
on the issues of wildlife protection
including bears and stationing them
to every municipal government.
·Developing administrative procedure
to reflect public opinion on the
policy of protection and management
of bears, as a part of natural resources
that all citizens share.
Animal Care and Management Law
When bears are captured from the
wild and put under human care, ‘Law
Concerning Care and Control of Animals’ becomes
applicable. This law covers all mammal,
bird, and reptile species that are
under human care and proposes to
protect such animals from abuse.
It also provides that when ‘an animal
must be destroyed, the animal shall
be destroyed by methods that cause
the
animal the minimum pain possible’.
But there is no regulation on animal
display facilities including bear
parks and zoos, and overcrowded and
inhumane conditions in which animals
are kept have been an issue.
This law needs to be revised
as follows.
·Specifically defining that keeping
animals in ways that disregard their
natural behavior and ecology is a
form of animal abuse.
·Making it mandatory for zoos and
other animal display facilities,
and animal dealers to have a license
to operate so, in case of any violation
of law, the license can be suspended
or revoked.
·Killing of captured wild animals,
when necessary, must be done humanely.
·Making it mandatory for animal
display facilities where animals
of wild-origin are kept to employ
a zoologist who specializes in wildlife
and an expert on nature conservation
in addition to a veterinarian.
Species Conservation Law
Japanese black bears that inhabit
in the mainland are an endangered
species that is listed under Appendix
I of CITES, which prohibits international
commercial trade but there is no
law to restrict domestic commercial
trade of them or of their parts.
And there is no system to protect
isolated area
populations in the wild, such as
the one in the western Japan, either.
This law needs to be revised
as follows.
·Widening the target of law to include
individual area population of a species
as well as a species as a whole.
·Establishing effectual systems
to conserve and protect bear habitat.
·Banning of domestic commercial
trade of bear products.
