Japanese towns struggle to deal with an influx of new arrivals: wild boars

By Anna Fifield

A wild boar runs through the grounds of a Kyoto University dormitory in the western Japan city of Kyoto on June 13, 2017. (Kyodo News/Getty Images)

HIRAIZUMI, Japan—  Rapidly shrinking towns and cities across Japan are experiencing a population explosion. Not an explosion of humans, though. An explosion in wild boar numbers.

Across the country, wild boars are moving in as Japan’s rapidly aging population either moves out or dies out. The boars come for the untended rice paddies and stay for the abandoned shelters.

“Thirty years ago, crows were the biggest problem around here,” said Hideo Numata, a farmer in Hiraizumi, human population 7,803, precise boar population unknown.

“But now we have these animals and not enough people to scare them away,” he said, sitting in a hut with a wood stove and two farmer friends. At 67, Numata is a relative youngster around here. His friends, Etsuro Sugawa and Shoichi Chiba, are 69 and 70 respectively. One of their farmer neighbors is 83...https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/japanese-towns-struggle-to-deal-with-an-influx-of-new-arrivals-wild-boars/2018/03/05/59af237e-1722-11e8-930c-45838ad0d77a_story.html?utm_term=.fdbcf1933840