A hunter disappeared in Japan near a recent sighting of a brown bear — just 75 miles from a town that announced its first-ever bear emergency, raising fears he might have been attacked in a frightening incident.
The unidentified man was reported missing by a friend on Mt. Esan, located on the northern island of Hokkaido, according to The Guardian.
Bloodstains were discovered nearby and a rifle, believed to belong to the missing man, was found on the side of a mountain road on Tuesday.
Just three days prior, on July 12, a massive brown bear was spotted near the same road.
Local officials set in motion a month-long brown bear emergency on the very same day for the town of Fukushima, Hokkaido, approximately 75 miles from Mt. Esan, and dispatched police, firefighters, and hunters around the clock to try to prevent further attacks.
The announcement came immediately after newspaper delivery man Kenju Sato was killed by a bear, which repeatedly bit the 52-year-old and dragged him over 100 yards.
Multiple bear attacks were also recently reported on Honshu, the largest of the four main islands of Japan.
An 81-year-old woman was killed by a black bear in the Iwate prefecture in northeast Japan on July 4. On Tuesday, two other elderly women, one in the northern Aomori prefecture and the other near Nara, were attacked in separate incidents.
Experts are blaming the increase in bear attacks partly on the animals’ struggles to find food — acorns and beechnuts — in their natural habitat due to the climate crisis, which forces them to travel to residential areas.
As a safety precaution, residents in the region are being urged not to leave food outside their homes to avoid attracting the bears.
The government also eased its stringent hunting laws, permitting the emergency shooting of bears in populated zones.
The Ussuri brown bears found in Hokkaido can reach over 9.5 feet and weigh more than 1,100 pounds.
