Bear attack on pilgrim on the Iseji route

[Bradypus]

A Japanese news website reports that a pilgrim walking the Iseji Kumano Kodo route was attacked by a bear earlier this week. An increasing number of reports of bear attacks in Japan in recent months but this is the first I've seen on a Kumano Kodo path.

Bear Attacks Woman on Kumano Kodo Pilgrimage Routes; Mie Prefecture Issues First Bear Alert

<p>TSU – A woman in her 70s was attacked and seriously injured by an Asian black bear at Tsuzurato Pass, a part of the Kumano Kodo Pilgrimage Routes, in Taiki, Mie Prefecture, the prefectural government said Thursday.</p>

japannews.yomiuri.co.jp

 

[Lindsay53]

Well that's something you don't expect on a pilgrimage these days. Hope she is OK and the bear is relocated rather than put down.

 

[Bradypus]

Well that's something you don't expect on a pilgrimage these days. Hope she is OK and the bear is relocated rather than put down.

I don't know whether it is simply more reporting or an actual increase but reports of bear attacks in Japan have definitely become more frequent over the past few years. It used to be that trouble was largely limited to Hokkaido and its population of brown bears. More recently there has been a lot of concern about attacks and close encounters with the black bear population on Honshu and to a far smaller extent on Shikoku.

 

[dbier]

Well that's something you don't expect on a pilgrimage these days. Hope she is OK and the bear is relocated rather than put down.

Mph. If the bear is not an endangered species, there's very little habitat both far enough away from people and from the attack site in Japan to relocate a bear that has now learned to attack people.

Not a high probability outcome.

I'm more worried about how the bear came to associate a 70- plus woman with either threat or food.

 

[Old Bamboo]

Some parts of that route are quite remote in the mountains so I'm not surprised. There are signs here and there warning of bears.

 

[Bradypus]

Some parts of that route are quite remote in the mountains so I'm not surprised. There are signs here and there warning of bears.

I saw warning signs about bears on the Kohechi route too.