Asahi: Foreign bear trackers nixed
This story seems odd. Transmitters seem like the kind of technology that Japanese companies could manufacture in their lunch breaks. Then again, maybe that's the whole point.Local authorities are clawing for ways to keep wild bears from attacking people and destroying crops after the telecommunications ministry told them to stop using high-intensity radio tracking devices. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications says the high-intensity radio waves from foreign-made transmitters attached to wild bears exceed regulations...local officials are worried that domestic-made bear-tracking transmitters, whose low-intensity waves can only be received over a short distance, are not up to the job. The Toyama prefectural government started using Canadian-made radio transmitters last fiscal year for bear research, and the Ishikawa prefectural government has been using U.S.-made transmitters for about 30 years...In May, the communications ministry's Hiroshima-based Chugoku Bureau of Telecommunications asked five prefectures under its jurisdiction not to use foreign transmitters, saying they do not conform to the Radio Law.
