The government on Friday compiled an emergency bear attack prevention plan, which further emphasized actively reducing the number of bears in the country and bolstering personnel who can take charge of such efforts, given the increasing threat posed by the animal.

During a ministerial meeting held on the issue on Friday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara instructed ministries to create a roadmap by the end of the current fiscal year, including setting a new target for the number of bears that need to be captured according to each region.

¡°We aim to remove bears from residential areas and, by strengthening capture efforts, to reduce the excessive number of bears,¡± Kihara said during a news conference following the meeting. ¡°Our goal is to establish a separation of habitats between humans and bears ¡ª to that end, we have comprehensively included all measures currently envisioned.¡±

Many of the proposed measures focus on increasing personnel and resources for bear management and culling, as staff shortages around the nation are regarded as one of the reasons for the current weakness of the system.

The government permitted the police force to use rifles to shoot the animal starting Thursday to alleviate the workload put on members of local hunting associations, who, until recently, were the only ones in the country allowed to cull bears.

It will also reach out to those who have experience handling guns, such as former police force and Self-Defense Forces members, for cooperation in bear control.

The government wants to encourage them to earn a hunting license in order to increase the number of people who can act on the ground to cull bears.

Financial assistance to local governments will be expanded to cover the expenses for hiring ¡°government hunters,¡± or officials holding hunting licenses, as well as purchasing traps.

On a midterm basis, the government is looking to train and nurture government hunters and professionals with high skills in wildlife management.

Experts have partly attributed the uncontrollable rise in bear numbers in Japan to the lack of specialized staff and funding at both the municipal and prefectural levels.

The plan also included measures to prevent bears from entering residential areas, such as reducing things that attract them like abandoned persimmon trees ¡ª as well as setting up electric fences, especially around farmland.

Various ministries came together to compile the plan in response to the record-high bear attacks in the country this fiscal year, which so far has seen 13 deaths and over 20,700 sightings.