‘Atta!'” shouts Seiichi Dejima of the Japan Society for Nature Conservation (NCSJ), raising his binoculars to his eyes. He is one of two endangered Japanese golden eagle breeders on a perch above the 10,000-hectare (25,000-acre) Akaya Forest, Japan’s Gunma Prefecture.
Dejima and the NCSJ are running a wild recovery plan to open up grasslands by clearing patches of monoculture coniferous plantations that will one day regenerate into deciduous forest combined with grasses. The new grasslands create for these birds of prey, with a wingspan of more than six feet, to pounce on their prey.
Rebuilding is an increasingly common environmental move to allow nature to recover itself, with the help of humans, to sustainably repair biodiversity, so that wildlife can, once again, thrive in regenerated and protected wild ecosystems.
In Japan, however, 44 percent of forest land is plantations, compared to a global average of 3. 5 percent. Each year during the 1960s, more than 2. 1 million acres of deciduous forests were converted to coniferous plantations as monocultures, in order to provide a reasonable supply. timber for Japan’s booming postwar economy, and this procedure continued, at a slower pace, until the early 2000s.
Much of this dense, dark monoculture forest is never cut down, as many landowners are too old for the backbreaking work. Much of Japan’s mountainous territory, especially that which surrounds almost all of Kyushu’s metropolitan spaces south of Hokkaido, has vast “green” areas. deserts. “
These densely populated tree plantations, most commonly Japanese cedars, block sunlight and stifle biodiversity. Arid forest soils, occupying steep slopes, are rapidly wasting their fertile topsoil, increasing the threat of landslides and flash floods, which are not a summary threat in the event of typhoons. Japan prone.
Dejima’s is fueled by a sense of urgency.
“The number of threatened species in Japan continues to rise and has recently risen to 3,700,” he says. “To conserve them better and more efficiently, it is essential to recover their habitat. “
In addition to Japan’s golden eagle, endangered species include the iconic red-crowned crane “tancho,” one of the rarest cranes in the world, which adorns the Japan Airlines logo and, in Japan, is limited to northeastern Hokkaido. . The Japanese crested ibis, or “Toki,” effectively reintroduced in 2003 to Sado Island after the death of Japan’s last wild ibis at the Japan Crested Ibis Conservation Center in 2003. The Japanese giant salamander in the southwest of the country is fully aquatic and is up to five feet long.
Therein lies the challenge: entire mountains, entire mountain ranges, in Japan are suffocated by these monoculture forests.
Ironically, the sacred Japanese cedar (cryptomeria) dominates the plantations. These magnificent trees, known as “Japanese redwoods” because of their sublime red trunks, can grow to a height of 230 feet and live for more than 1,000 years. Historically, those trees accounted for 1% of Japan’s forests, today they are not as unusual and problematic as weeds.
Unlike the Akaya Forest, which is entirely on state-owned land, 57% of Japan’s forest land is privately owned.
“In Miyagi Prefecture’s Minami-Sanriku domain, personal forest recovery efforts have already begun,” says Dejima. “The forest owner owns 100 hectares (247 acres) of forest,” he says of one project.
Take a look at the new openings in our newsroom.
While the amount of land returned to nature may seem too small to make much of a difference, he believes such small projects want to play a role in this effort.
“We believe that it is not easy to implement this transfer on private land where there are no large landowners, but we also believe it is necessary. “
Seventy percent of land parcels are small: less than one hectare (2. 5 acres).
West Tokyo lies almost entirely within the 300,500-acre Chichibu Tama Kai National Park, which straddles Yamanashi, Saitama, and Nagano prefectures and the city of Tokyo. Despite being a national park, vast expanses are covered with Japanese cedar plantations, many of which are situated on small, personal plots. The government has followed this combined land tenure formula to protect wilderness spaces from the potential expansion of the country’s higher population density.
Rebuilding a domain along Chichibu Tama Kai National Park, with its patchwork of personal lands, local government lands, and prefectural lands, presents greater hurdles for conservationists. “That’s why the reconstruction movement here in Japan is moving slowly” for many other evolved countries, Dejima says. But, he concludes, “by far the biggest challenge is funding. “
Shouta Teraya, director of the herbal environments segment of Shari Town Hall in Hokkaido, with Dejima. “Today, local NGOs and voluntary organizations are taking the lead in ‘reconstruction’ activities across Japan. However, solid investment and new leadership are a challenge.
“It’s the national government that sets the policy,” he said. “So it’s up to local governments to work with other people and local NGOs. They will only succeed if government agencies are willing to take responsibility. “
Small plots and donations have a long legacy in the region.
A century ago, the northern island of Hokkaido, home to the indigenous Ainu people, was still a frontier, but since the 17th century it had attracted Japanese from the main islands in search of opportunity. They seized the lands of the Ainu and assimilated them by force. the indigenous population in their culture.
In the early 20th century, this wave of Japanese settlers began settling on the Shiretoko Peninsula in northeastern Hokkaido. A land of Ezo grizzly bears, salmon, volcanoes, and the southernmost winter ice floes, the northern tip of the peninsula was designated a national park. in 1964 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005.
Still, settlers continued to live within the barriers of Shari, the urban part of the national park. At its peak, in the 1950s and 1960s, there were 60 settlements occupying 2,127 acres of land within the park; The last settlers resisted. until 1973.
In February 1977, the local mayor Yutaka Fujitani of Shari City, fearing a wave of progress brought about by Japan’s booming economy, introduced what was necessarily a crowdfunding crusade in which citizens from all over Japan would purchase, through donations, one hundred square meters of land. . . . This audacious plan was called the Shiretoko Movement of the Hundred Square Meters.
“It was an absolutely new concept to buy land with people’s cash to protect the domain from hotel developers,” says Daisuke Imura, guest use coordinator at Shiretoko National Park. “In this way, Shari Town has become known as a pioneer of the environmental movement in Japan. “
The plan to acquire land used by settlers for agricultural purposes in the national park and then rebuild it. In 1977, they acquired 25 percent of the land from farmers. By 1980, they had acquired a total of 40 percent.
It wasn’t until 2010 that all the land from the former settlers in the national park was purchased, requiring the donation of another 49,000 people in the country totaling 520 million yen (more than $5. 9 million at 2010 exchange rates), over a three-year period. Period of the year. Decades.
On an unusually warm October morning, crowds of volunteers gathered outside the Shiretoko National Park Nature Center, where about 100 tree planters a day quietly boarded buses bound for the forest.
The welcoming committee, a lone wild fox, inspected the gathering, which included young children and a centenarian, as they walked silently alone into an open field in an amphitheater of autumnal Japanese larch.
Masanao Nakanishi of the Shiretoko Nature Foundation delicately raised a five-year-old single “todomatsui” (Maria’s fir) sapling for all to see. It looked like a houseplant with a hemp rope, or a pot, securing the soil to the roots.
“Draw a line around the outside of the sapling, but give it more space,” he pleaded as he placed the sapling. He then skillfully dug a hole larger than the circumference of the fir tree in the comfortable volcanic soil, placed the sapling in its new home, and replaced the soil.
In less than a minute, the tree is ready to start rooting.
Taking the shovels, the crowd split into groups of multigenerational family members, young couples, and groups of friends to get to work.
Thirty minutes later, what was once cleared land is reborn as a new, young forest.
Piece after piece, year after year, this extension of Shiretoko has been on its feet thanks to the help of eco-friendly volunteers who help nature recover.
These former farmlands have been completely recolonized by the Ezo grizzly bear, cousin of Alaska’s Kodiak bears, Yezo shika (deer), fox and eagles, all thanks to Shiretoko’s 100-square-meter movement.
But good luck didn’t come cheap. Rebuilding the 861 hectares of land required four decades of painting and more than $5 million in funding.
This brings us back to Seiichi Dejima’s task that, on a smaller scale, is arguably the most productive way to scale up efforts to rebuild millions of hectares of land in Japan.
Their undeniable plan to create small clearings in the tree plantations and then let nature do the rebuilding work, before moving on to clearing the next plot, is arguably the most viable plan, given the limited budget and manpower needed for the job. .
Perhaps by taking the more productive of the two approaches to rebuilding nature — expanding the organization of the national network of the Shiretoko 100 Square Meter Movement while Dejima follows its undeniable timeline of cutting down grasslands into forests — large-scale reconstruction in Japan will be within reach. .
“If society is high, politics will move forward,” says Shouta Teraya of Shari City’s Natural Environment Section.
But for those efforts to gain momentum, it would possibly also be necessary to reorient the mindset of the Japanese population.
“The land that used to be fields and mountains has been landscaped and paved,” Teraya lamented of the land where other older people used to play outdoors in their youth. “The children’s environment has changed. “
Our nonprofit newsroom offers award-winning weather advertising and policies for free. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep us going. Please make a donation now for our work.
“Young Japanese spend their holidays on social media such as YouTube and TikTok, video games, shopping, sports, etc. , and rarely picnic with friends. “
Developing a passion for nature reclamation among those young people requires communicating with them about rebuilding in the virtual and evolved places where they spend their time, and for global environmental organizations to be more artistic in their public relations efforts, he said.
But Seiichi Dejima believes that public construction for reconstruction is as undeniable as the grasslands he cuts through forests.
“We want to increase the number of jobs like mine, similar to environmental conservation activities,” he said. “If this is the case, we will get more young Japanese people interested in the environment. “
ICN offers award-winning weather advertising and policies free of charge. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep us going.