Fall 2012 - Brown Bears Starved In Japan's Shiretoko Wilderness - High Temps Delayed Salmon Run

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By the time September came around, most of the other brown bears that Yamanaka and other researchers monitored were either severely underweight or had vanished. Shiretoko brown bears generally lose most of their fat in July, when food resources in the mountainous areas are most scarce.

In normal years, the animals start putting in weight and storing nutrition for winter hibernation as soon as pink salmon--their favorite food source--start swimming upstream in August. But last year, the salmon arrived later than usual because the water temperature was 2 degrees higher than average.

Anglers also noted that Shiretoko’s salmon haul in August fell to about one-third of what it was the same month a year earlier. An official at the local fishermen’s cooperative said, “It was the poorest catch in a quarter of a century.”

Bear sightings, apparently due to the lack of food, spiked in urban and tourist areas. In Shari, in particular, there were record 1,763 sightings, double the figure in 2005 when there were 857 such reports. The town started keeping records in 1993.

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http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201302170007