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.
Asian black bear
In the remoter areas of Japan, black bears can be serious crop predators: black bears feed on cultivated bamboo shoots in spring, on plums, watermelons and corn in the summer, and on persimmons, sweet potatoes and rice in the autumn. Japanese black bears are estimated to damage 3,000 bee hives annually. When feeding on large crops such as watermelons or pumpkins, black bears will ignore the flesh, and eat the seeds, thus adversely affecting future harvests. Black bears can girdle and kill trees by stripping their bark for the sap. This can cause serious economic problems in Asia's valuable timber forests. In the late 1970s, 400-1,200 hectares of land had been affected by bears bark stripping Japanese conifers. There is evidence that 70-year-old conifers (commanding the highest market values) may also have been bark stripped.