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Bear encounter prevention app growing in popularity in Japan

BowBear hopes you’ll see no bear.

This year has seen 69 bear attacks across Japan, nearing the 2023 all-time high of 71. Five people also tragically lost their lives in encounters with bears that are increasingly encroaching on rural communities as food grows scarce and human populations there shrink.

Staying alert is the key to staying safe in areas where bears are known to wander into, and one tool that recently came out is BowBear, in which “bow” is pronounced like “bow and arrow” but is also a homophone of the Japanese word for “prevention.” The app intends to be an aid in keeping bears away with a two-pronged approach.

First, the app contains a map of Japan with places where bears were spotted marked in orange. Spots where bears were confirmed to have been are marked in red. Also, if you spot a bear, you can report it through the app and update the map.

It’s very important to note that this app works on user input, and while BowBear celebrated over 100,000 downloads recently, the accuracy and coverage of the map depends greatly on its own users. In terms of staying safe, we highly recommend checking the local government websites for up-to-date bear sighting information and guidance as well.

However, if more and more people are using BowBear in earnest, it could not only provide regional safety information but also display big data on bear movement all over the country.

The other way BowBear intends to help is with a feature that plays the audio of a dog barking for a set amount of time. The makers of the app don’t guarantee this will keep away bears, but it’s worth a shot if you end up in bear country and don’t have any other tools available, and experts do often recommend that hikers talk, play sound from a radio, or attach a ringing bell to their belt or backpack to make their presence known, since many bear attacks occur when the animals are startled by unexpectedly crossing paths with humans.

▼ I can say with certainty that no bears appeared in my office while playing the audio, for whatever that’s worth.

Reading through all this, you can easily see that BowBear is not a miracle app to keep you perfectly safe from bears. That’s because no app can ever be that, but the core point of BowBear is that it takes as many people and communities working together as possible to stay safe from encounters with bears.

Source: PR Times, NHK World Japan
Featured image: PR Times
Insert images: PR Times, Pakutaso
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