TOKYO \u2013 The Japanese city of Utsunomiya has suspended all 94 of the primary and middle schools \u200bthat it operates on Monday after its \u200cfirst-ever bear sighting, a municipal official said.<\/p>\n
The city of half a million residents, about 100 km (60 miles) north of Tokyo, said \u200bthe bear was first seen in a residential \u200barea near a park on Saturday evening.<\/p>\n
A screen grab from surveillance footage shows a wild bear running past bystanders in a residential area in Utsunomiya, Japan, on June 7, 2026. via REUTERS<\/p>\n
It \u2060remains at large after the last sighting early \u200bMonday morning about half a kilometer from a \u200bmiddle school.<\/p>\n
Bear attacks, including in urban areas, have been on the rise in Japan, prompting the government to set up a \u200btask force this year to reduce casualties<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last week, \u200ba bear attack in the northeastern city of Fukushima<\/a> left \u200cat least four people injured.\u00a0<\/p>\n Security footage<\/a>\u00a0from Fukushima Steel Works shows a black bear chasing a worker by the entrance of the factory and throwing him to \u200bthe ground.<\/p>\n The suspensions follow the bear\u2019s last sighting Monday morning near a middle school. Reuters<\/p>\n Asiatic black \u200bbears are \u2060listed as a vulnerable species globally, but their numbers are estimated to have\u00a0tripled \u200bin Japan since 2012, helped by \u200ba decline \u2060in hunting.<\/p>\n The number of bear attacks in Japan has risen. Reuters<\/p>\n Experts say climate change has reduced harvests of bears\u2019 natural food like acorns and beechnuts, while \u2060the \u200bdepopulation of rural areas and the \u200bproliferation of abandoned farmland have emboldened them to seek food near \u200bhuman settlements<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO \u2013 The Japanese city of Utsunomiya has suspended all 94 of the primary and middle schools \u200bthat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":693053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[18212,19122,3471,79,201,965],"class_list":["post-693052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-animal-attacks","tag-bears","tag-japan","tag-science","tag-wildlife","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}