Kitami, Hokkaido – A rise in bear encounters across Japan is forcing officials to confront a difficult question: how to manage wildlife in a country where people and predators increasingly share the same space . With bears emerging from hibernation and fatal attacks already reported this year, governments at every level are reassessing how to prevent the next incident. In northeastern Hokkaido, a hiker was attacked and killed by a brown bear last August in Shiretoko National Park while descending from the summit of Mount Rausu. The incident marked the first fatality since the park was granted UNESCO World Heritage Status in 2005. Trails on the peninsula were closed for the remainder of the season and are expected to reopen this summer. The Rausu incident involved an Ezo brown bear, a subspecies related to the larger and more widely known grizzly. On Honshu, the Asian black bear is more frequently involved in human encounters.…