It seems that my point saying bear numbers are rapidly declining may have been incorrect, as I have since been provided some data which show the numbers have been slowly increasing since the 90s (which is great news) - albeit the data is extremely variable and the numbers do still suggest the bears are vulnerable. Nevertheless, shooting a bear for simply walking past a township seems extreme and unnecessary so the point of this petition is to encourage the authorities to consider alternate measures of coexistence with bears, such as research and education (and tagging and tracking instead of culling). This petition is to demonstrate that this is something that the Niseko community and visiting tourists care about.