Why Hokkaido’s Deer Population Is Exploding, And What Is Being Done

The deer population in Hokkaido, once almost extinct, has rebounded strongly in recent years with often-dire consequences for their human neighbours.

The growing population has led to a rapid increase in deer-car accidents, agricultural losses and an aggressive effort by the prefectural government to cull the population and then figure out what to do with the remains. The deer species in question – only found in Hokkaido – are Ezo deer and at up to 190 cm in length and 150kg in weight, are about twice as large as their Honshu (main island) counterparts.

At the end of the 19th century during the Meiji Era, the Ezo deer situation was quite different. Overhunting and heavy snowfall had nearly wiped out the population over the span of a couple decades. A revival began around 30 years ago due to conservation efforts such as (for a time) a ban on hunting and a concurrent decline of the human, rural population. In recent years, rebounding numbers of deer have caused a serious rise in traffic accidents and crop losses via trampling and grazing across Hokkaido.

Two popular theories for the rise of the deer population are the extinction of their main natural predator, the Ezo wolf, and global warming making the harsh Hokkaido winters more hospitable. But Naoki Agatsuma, a professor at the Field Science Center for Northern Biosphere at Hokkaido University, has been pushing back against this narrative.

Noting that the Ezo Wolf has been extinct since the late 19th Century – well before the current population rebound – Agatsuma san compares the most current Ezo deer population estimate from the Hokkaido Government of 720,000 in 2022 to his own population estimate for the early Meiji Era (before the population decline), extrapolated from time-period trapping records.

The conclusion Agatsuma san draws is that the population rise over the last 30 years may simply be a reestablishment of the natural population, although it often is described as a “population explosion” or “overabundance” now because of the impact the numbers have on contemporary Hokkaido residents and visitors.

And those residents and visitors now may be inadvertently replacing the long-lost Ezo wolf with their vehicles. In 2016, there were 1,916 deer-car accidents across Hokkaido but in 2023 there were 5,287, an almost tripling of incidents. To assuage this and lessen the impact of trampling and grazing on farming communities, the Hokkaido Government established the Hokkaido Deer Countermeasures Promotion Ordinance in 2014 which sets deer-kill bounties for hunters with annual targets, engages in public-awareness for motorists and works with private restaurants and other companies to promote uses for the culled Ezo deer.

The current bounty per deer is JPY9,000 (US$60) and in 2022, 144,989 were hunted or captured and killed. Hunters often take their own venison from the prey but much of the remainder ends up being buried. For the last several years, the Hokkaido Government has been working to exploit this potentially valuable resource, as have private companies.

One such venture is Rankoshi-based Yuku Deer Leather Wears (“Yuku” being the indigenous Ainu word for deer), a startup that makes leather jackets from Ezo deer hides. The company was started by Dai Moriwaki who in 2020, while working at a Hiroshima TV station and attending graduate school for business, learned of Ezo deer being hunted and then not used. A leather-jacket aficionado since he was 16, Moriwaki san already knew of internationally-recognized leather tanning facilities in Kansai (the region centred around Osaka) and saw an opportunity to create a western product with Japanese materials and tailoring.

Images: Yuku Deer Leather Wears

In October 2022 Moriwaki san quit his job of 28 years, moved to Rankoshi (a town next to Niseko) and founded his company. Ezo deer skins are sourced from a network of hunters, sent to Kansai for vegetable tanning using legumes, a traditional method that is certified by Japan’s eco-leather system, and then marketed with an eye to the foreign market around Niseko.

“So far, we have half and half foreigners and Japanese,” said Moriwaki san of his customers.

The biggest untapped resource, however, from culled Ezo deer is the venison and the Hokkaido Government is promoting its consumption across the prefecture and beyond. Its methods include lectures on the health of deer meat, tastings for Hokkaido students, Ezo deer meat festivals featuring Hokkaido restaurants that serve venison and on 31 January of this year, the first Shika Deer Meat Quality Control Conference.

Hokkaido Government flyers advertising an Ezo deer meat festival and advocating motorist safety.  ||  Foraging Ezo deer photo: Aaron Jamieson

While the use of culled deers seems to be improving, the negative impacts of the increased deer population on the human environment are still accelerating, as shown by the deer-car accident data. While certainly due to the rise in population, the increase of such incidents since 2016 can’t simply be ascribed to this alone as population estimates show the current numbers were already almost reached by that year.

While there isn’t a clear answer for why accidents and agricultural damage has continued to rise at a faster pace than population growth, Agatsuma san said the problem may be that continued rural depopulation is causing Ezo deer to encroach upon areas they were largely kept out of for a century or more.

Depopulation of agricultural communities often leads those remaining to rely more on their vehicles to access supermarkets and other services and Hokkaido’s rising popularity as a year-round tourism destination means more outsiders – many with little experience avoiding wildlife – on the roads. Humans and Ezo deer alike, in other words, need time to adjust to a new normal.

If the way to control the population is creating a bigger market for Ezo deer products, the solution may ultimately lie outside Hokkaido. Ezo deer venison, and deer meat in general, is growing in popularity at specialty and BBQ restaurants across Japan, especially in light of the rising cost of imported beef due to the persistently-depreciating yen. And the nationwide Covid-era rise in pet ownership is leading to a boom for Ezo deer dog food and treats, with processing factories like a Nanpu Foods facility in Minamifurano popping up across Hokkaido. The more Ezo deer becomes a marketable commodity, the more hunters will work to meet the culling targets set by the Hokkaido government.

In the meantime, drive with caution and remember, as the Hokkaido authorities like to point out, that if you see one deer, there are probably more right behind it.

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