Flowers at the end of beech tree branches are seen in this photo taken in the city of Akita on April 21, 2026. (Mainichi/Akira Kudo)
AKITA — The Tohoku Regional Forest Office of Japan’s Forestry Agency based in this city has reported that beech trees flowered in abundance this spring, indicating a good harvest of nuts, the primary food source for bears.
Forestry officers examined the flowering status of beech trees by the roadside in a national forest in Akita through binoculars and released the results April 21. Beech nuts are a favorite food of bears, and poor crops are believed to make them more likely to appear in residential and urban areas. Nut growth this year is likely to exceed last year’s, when the region experienced a severe crop failure.
The survey is being conducted at a total of 145 sites in five prefectures in northeastern Japan’s Tohoku region — Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Akita and Yamagata — within the office’s jurisdiction. In Akita Prefecture, 55 sites are being surveyed. The office will examine actual nut production in autumn.
A Tohoku Regional Forest Office official, front, checks the flowering condition of a beech tree on the upper right in the city of Akita on April 21,2026. (Mainichi/Akira Kudo)
In a national forest located in Nibetsu in the city of Akita, male and female flowers could be observed mainly at the tips of branches. An officer commented, “Last year, when the crop was extremely poor, there were hardly any flowers, but this year’s flowering is more abundant.”
In the five prefectures, the beech nut crop in autumn was average or poor in 2022, extremely poor in 2023, abundant or average in 2024 and extremely poor in 2025. In recent years, extremely poor harvests have occurred every other year, and in such years the number of bear sightings and cases of human injury have increased.
(Japanese original by Akira Kudo, Akita Bureau)
AloJapan.com