He sowed terror in dairy cow farms. Nicknamed “ninja” for its ability to avoid human traps, this brown bear from the island of Hokkaido (northern Japan) was recently killed after a four-year hunt, local authorities announced on Tuesday.
“A brown bear was shot on July 30 and various analyses, including DNA tests, confirmed that it was OSO18”, the animal’s code name, Tadayoshi Takeda told AFP. a member of the Hokkaido departmental authorities.
66 cattle assaulted
OSO18, who stood around two meters tall, had been actively sought after since he started preying on dairy cows in 2019. In total, he is suspected of attacking 66 cattle, about half of which died of their injuries. According to the Japanese public television channel NHK, which like other Japanese media was passionate about tracking down this plantigrade and the mysteries that surrounded it.
About 11,700 brown bears live on the big island of Hokkaido according to estimates by local authorities, and their population is increasing. They rarely attack humans, but farmers and herders in Hokkaido blame them for frequently causing damage to their crops and attacking livestock. In the 2021/22 annual fiscal year (ending March 31, 2022), 1,056 bears were killed in Hokkaido, a record for decades.