{"id":144504,"date":"2025-11-20T09:51:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T09:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/144504\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T09:51:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T09:51:07","slug":"how-a-small-town-spat-in-hokkaido-nearly-derailed-its-bear-response-measures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/144504\/","title":{"rendered":"How a small-town spat in Hokkaido nearly derailed its bear response measures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                                    SAPPORO \u2013 <\/p>\n<p>A recent confrontation between a Hokkaido town assembly member and a hunters\u2019 association shines a light on how graying and shrinking towns are dealing with the growing bear threat.<\/p>\n<p>The trouble began on Sept. 27 in Shakotan, a small town on the Sea of Japan coast west of Otaru. The town has a population of around 1,600, with nearly half of the residents age 65 or older.<\/p>\n<p>Nine hunters from a hunting association in nearby Yoichi and three Shakotan officials had trapped a 284 kilogram brown bear in a steel cage, when Kazuyoshi Kaita, the vice-chair of the Shakotan town assembly, showed up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAPPORO \u2013 A recent confrontation between a Hokkaido town assembly member and a hunters\u2019 association shines a light&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[50,36031,75465,32655,111,139,69,147,97425,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-144504","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-animals","9":"tag-bears","10":"tag-hokkaido","11":"tag-hunting","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-shakotan","17":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}