Asian black bear
Five black bear populations, occurring in Kyushu, Shikoku, West-Chugoku, East-Chugoku and Kii areas, were listed as endangered by the Environmental Agency in the Japanese Red Data Book in 1991. Small isolated populations in the Tanzawa and Shimokita areas of mainland Honshū were listed as endangered in 1995. Beyond recognising these populations as endangered, there is still a lack of efficient conservation methods for Japanese black bears.
Brown bear
While the brown bear's range has shrunk and it has faced local extinctions, it remains listed as a least concern species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) with a total population of approximately 200,000. , this and the American black bear are the only bear species not classified as threatened by the IUCN. However, the California, North African and Mexican subspecies were hunted to extinction in the 19th and early 20th centuries and many of the southern Asian subspecies are highly endangered. One of the smaller-bodied subspecies, the Himalayan brown bear, is critically endangered, occupying only 2% of its former range and threatened by uncontrolled poaching for its body parts. The Marsican brown bear, one of several currently isolated populations of the main Eurasian brown bear population in central Italy, is believed to have a population of just 30 to 40 bears.