Japan struggles with wild boars

RAPIDLY shrinking towns and cities across Japan are experiencing a population explosion.

Not an explosion of humans, though. An explosion in wild boar numbers.

Across the country, wild boars are moving in as Japan’s rapidly ageing population either moves out or dies out. The boars come for the untended rice paddies and stay for the abandoned shelters.

“Thirty years ago, crows were the biggest problem around here,” said Hideo Numata, a farmer in Hiraizumi, human population 7 803, precise boar population unknown.

“But now we have these animals and not enough people to scare them away,” he said, sitting in a hut with a wood stove and two farmer friends. At 67, Numata is a relative youngster around here. His friends, Etsuro Sugawa and Shoichi Chiba, are 69 and 70 respectively. One of their farmer neighbours is 83.

Southern parts of Japan have had a wild boar problem for some years. The papers are full of reports of boars in train stations and parking garages, around school dormitories and even in the sea, swimming out to islands.

Just this month, a seventy-something woman was attacked on Shikoku Island by an 80kg boar when she opened her front door. A boar charged into a shopping mall on the island last October, biting five employees and rampaging through the aisles before being captured.

In Kyoto, at least 10 wild boars were spotted in urban areas last year. Two charged into a high school in December, causing panic and the students had to be evacuated. But the animals are now wreaking havoc in northern areas long considered too cold and snowy for them. In Iwate Prefecture, only two wild boars were caught in 2011, when local authorities started keeping statistics. In the last fiscal year, that number had rocketed to 94. The influx is the result of two factors, experts say: declining human populations and climate change.

Japan’s regions are struggling to deal with dwindling numbers of residents, the result of a super-ageing society – 40% of the population will be older than 65 by 2050 – and a national trend toward moving to the big cities in the south.

Farmers are dying and there is no one to take over their land. Take Sugawa and Chiba: They both have sons but they’re salarymen in the city with no interest in a hard life tending fields and fending off animals heavier than themselves.

This northern region has been hit particularly hard by depopulation. People were forced out when the gigantic 2011 earthquake caused a triple meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, and after the resulting tsunami wiped out coastal towns. Much of the area remains inhospitable for humans, but perfect for boars.

“Because of depopulation, there are more and more abandoned fields and rice paddies. They’re perfect places for wild boars to hide and feed,” said Koichi Kaji, professor of wildlife management at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology.

With reports of boars rampaging through the ghost towns around the Fukushima plant, some people worry if the animals might now be becoming radioactive.

Another factor for the boar explosion: The winters are also getting markedly warmer. “We used to have much more snow than this,” Numata said.