Good evening, everyone. In Sapporo, the news is all about the heat and bear sightings every day.Sapporo city is adjacent to the mountains, so it is a city where you can encounter animals relatively often.Deer, foxes, squirrels, etc. are frequently spotted.

There are various reasons why bears are spotted in the city, but first, there is an increase in the number of bears that are forced to come down to human settlements because they cannot get enough food in the mountains due to sudden changes in the environment such as extreme heat, second, the habitat of bears has come close to human settlements due to depopulation, and finally, the number of bears themselves has increased.

The brown bear (Ursus arctos) is a large wild animal that symbolizes Hokkaido and is the largest land mammal in Japan. Of all the extant bears in the world, this species has the widest distribution, and has adapted to a wide range of climatic environments, from the temperate zones of Eurasia and North America to the tundra, and even to the arid regions around the Gobi Desert.

In Japan, brown bears live in Hokkaido, and Asiatic black bears live in Honshu. It is known that brown bears also lived in Honshu about 32,500 years ago (Late Pleistocene). However, unable to adapt to the drastic changes in the natural environment, brown bears disappeared from Honshu.

In the 1960s and 1970s, brown bears in Hokkaido were treated as pests that needed to be exterminated, as they caused frequent damage to livestock and crops, and even human casualties. Since 1966, spring bear extermination has been actively carried out by shooting them with guns during the remaining snow season, when brown bears are easiest to catch. This was essentially a policy of extermination. However, in the late 1980s, the brown bear population declined significantly in many areas, and in some areas it was feared that the bears would become extinct, leading to the abolition of spring bear culling in 1990. In the 2000s, the brown bear population and distribution area gradually recovered, and now they are frequently spotted near human settlements and urban areas, and even inside them (urban bear problem). As the brown bear population and habitat have recovered significantly in many areas, a major issue is how humans and brown bears can live together in harmony in the future.

You probably won’t encounter many bears in Sapporo, but if you go to the forested areas, please be careful.
And while you won’t meet any bears, you can still meet escort girls in Sapporo, so don’t worry.
Foreigners are welcome, so please enjoy.
We’ll be waiting for you at the in-call ☆