Bear warnings in Zao Town, Miyagi
Zao Town posts recent bear warnings with dates, places, and report types. Miyagi Prefecture also publishes annual spreadsheets, but the town warnings and prefecture rows do not always match one-to-one.
What this is
Zao’s public bear record has three layers: Miyagi Prefecture’s official spreadsheet, Zao Town’s current bear table, and the town’s resident alert archive.
This is not an official warning or a complete bear database. It summarizes the public records currently available from Miyagi Prefecture and Zao Town.
Official records
What the public records show
Scope: Zao Town · Miyagi Prefecture · Togatta Onsen · Enda · official town and prefecture pages. Each panel names where its numbers come from, so prefecture totals, town alerts, and injury documents are not folded into one danger score.
Zao rows in Miyagi FY2026
23
Through June 18, 2026, 9:00 a.m.; partial-year file
Rows in Zao Town table
21
May 4-June 17, 2026 on the checked town page
Main current-table area
Togatta Onsen
11 of 21 checked town-table rows
Report types
17 + 4
17 sightings and 4 signs of a bear in the town table
Miyagi records allow a year-by-year Zao comparison
For annual comparison, the cleanest public source is Miyagi’s official file, filtered to rows where the local area is 蔵王町. This keeps the Zao count within one record set instead of mixing prefectural records with town alerts.
Recent Zao reports usually appear in early summer and autumn
The recent complete years show two visible periods for Zao rows in Miyagi’s files: early summer and fall. FY2026 has only reached June in the checked file, so it is not a full-year pattern yet.
Zao monthly report counts
| Month | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | FY2026 to Jun 18 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| May | 2 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 12 |
| Jun | 2 | 5 | 26 | 11 | 10 |
| Jul | 6 | 5 | 22 | 9 | — |
| Aug | 2 | 4 | 16 | 5 | — |
| Sep | 1 | 5 | 2 | 6 | — |
| Oct | 0 | 14 | 0 | 27 | — |
| Nov | 1 | 4 | 0 | 21 | — |
| Dec | 0 | 2 | 1 | 6 | — |
| Jan | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | — |
| Feb | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | — |
| Mar | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | — |
Blank cells mean that FY2026 has not reached those months in the checked file.
What Zao Town’s own records show
Zao Town’s pages give recent sightings and signs with local detail. The charts below count rows from the town table; the alert archive shows the messages residents could receive by app, social media, or email.
Zao Town keeps a public archive of resident alerts
The town alert archive gives resident-level details: place, time, and what was reported. It belongs beside the Miyagi spreadsheet, not in place of it.
- Alert archive
- 蔵王町住民向け情報配信
- Plus+ archive for Zao Town resident messages
- June 2026 bear alerts
- 4 alert posts found
- June 10 bundled four reports; June 11, 12, and 17 were individual bear alert posts
- Current town table
- クマの目撃等情報
- Recent sightings and signs, newest first
- Record type
- Local detail
- Local place/time detail; not a long-running annual count
The town table shows when recent reports came in
These counts come from Zao Town’s current public table. They are a snapshot of the active warning-period record, not the full Miyagi spreadsheet.
Town table entries by date
| Date | Town table entries |
|---|---|
| May 4 | 1 |
| May 8 | 1 |
| May 13 | 2 |
| May 15 | 1 |
| May 17 | 1 |
| May 18 | 2 |
| May 21 | 1 |
| May 26 | 1 |
| May 30 | 1 |
| Jun 7 | 1 |
| Jun 9 | 1 |
| Jun 10 | 3 |
| Jun 11 | 2 |
| Jun 12 | 1 |
| Jun 14 | 1 |
| Jun 17 | 1 |
Only dates shown on Zao Town’s current table are included.
Togatta Onsen appears most often in the current table
The town table includes place names. Grouped by first named area, 11 of the 21 checked entries are in Togatta Onsen.
Most checked entries are sightings
Zao Town labels each row as either a sighting or a sign of a bear. In the checked table, 17 rows are sightings and four are signs such as footprints, compost damage, or animal damage.
How these numbers were counted
- •The annual Zao count comes from Miyagi records listed under 蔵王町.
- •The Miyagi spreadsheet and Zao Town’s current table overlap, but they are not identical. Compare date and place before treating rows as matches.
- •The town-table charts count public table rows from May 4 through June 17, 2026; they do not include Miyagi-only rows from April 1 or May 25.
- •The town alert archive records recent local warnings; it is not a separate annual incident table.
- •Long-term use of the town table depends on regular snapshots.
- •The available public sources did not include a Zao Town table for mistaken captures or capture classifications, so no such count is reported.
What the public records show
Bear activity around Zao Town appears in two public record sets. Miyagi Prefecture publishes the longer-running spreadsheet. Zao Town publishes the local warning material.
The two sources are not interchangeable. The prefecture file is the better year-by-year count. The town records are better for recent place and time details.
The annual Zao count comes from Miyagi
Miyagi’s official spreadsheet has a column for city, ward, town, or village. Filtering that column to 蔵王町 gives a Zao-specific series from FY2012 onward.
That makes the prefecture file the cleaner source for annual comparison. Town alerts show what residents were told in specific places, but they are not the annual count.
- •H24 / FY2012 Zao Town records: 68
- •H25 / FY2013 Zao Town records: 34
- •H26 / FY2014 Zao Town records: 80
- •H27 / FY2015 Zao Town records: 43
- •H28 / FY2016 Zao Town records: 76
- •H29 / FY2017 Zao Town records: 30
- •H30 / FY2018 Zao Town records: 45
- •R1 / FY2019 Zao Town records: 49
- •R2 / FY2020 Zao Town records: 36
- •R3 / FY2021 Zao Town records: 23
- •R4 / FY2022 Zao Town records: 14
- •R5 / FY2023 Zao Town records: 41
- •R6 / FY2024 Zao Town records: 71
- •R7 / FY2025 Zao Town records: 88
- •R8 / FY2026 to Jun 18 Zao Town records: 23
What Zao Town’s own pages add
Zao Town’s current bear table is a short-term local record. The checked version lists 21 entries from May 4 through June 17, 2026. Each entry gives a place and identifies the report as either a sighting or a sign of a bear, such as footprints, compost damage, or animal damage.
The town table does not exactly match the 23 Zao rows in Miyagi’s spreadsheet. The Miyagi file includes an April 1 sighting at 遠刈田温泉字八山 and a May 25 sign report at 円田字八幡山 that were not present in the checked Zao Town table. One May 8 row also uses slightly different place wording in the two sources.
Zao’s resident notification service appears to be the source behind app, social media, and email alerts. Its public Plus+ archive includes four June 2026 bear alert posts through June 17. The June 10 post bundles four reports; June 11, June 12, and June 17 are individual alerts.
What the local alerts add
The alerts answer the practical question first: where, when, and what kind of report was made.
The limit is just as important. An alert archive is not a permanent data table. Long-term tracking depends on regular snapshots of the Plus+ archive and the town table, with alert date, sighting date and time, district, situation, and report type recorded consistently.
What the public sources do not show yet
The available public records do not include a Zao Town table for mistaken captures or capture classifications. They also do not map alert locations or measure distance from a specific address.
The public record supports a deliberately narrow reading: town alerts provide local detail, annual totals stay separate, and the record is not more precise than its sources.