Aiiieee!!! Attack Of The Slightly Radioactive Japanese Wild Boars!!! Run!!!
The aggressive, hard-headed animals are some of the most destructive in the world, not only devouring crops, but destroying fields and root systems with their sharp teeth and trowel-like hooves from Kobe to Chiba City. It wasn't always like this. Boars are a native species in Japan, but you could go years without seeing one there for most of the 20th century, thanks to diseases like cholera in the 1920s. Then, in the early 2000s, the animals began descending on cities and farmland in an almost plague-like fashion.
Many believe this resurgence was the result of human laziness: farmers and hunters allowed domesticated pigs to escape, then breed with their feral counterparts and produce legions of hybrid boar-pig offspring in the wild. Others blame a lack of food in the mountains, or expanding cities and roadways that have disrupted the natural boar habitat, leaving them no choice but to head into human territory. It doesnt help that the boars have essentially no natural predators.
Whatever the cause, there are two thing people can agree on: theyre ruthless, and they're everywhere. And sometimes, they're radioactive. In the contaminated area in and around the site of Fukishimas 2011 nuclear meltdown, the boars' voracious appetite and prolific breeding has led to an indeterminate number of animals (thousands? Tens of thousands?) becoming contaminated with radiation. Many of them are journeying into nearby prefectures. People have even stopped eating a kind of boar stew that used to be a specialty dish in some of these places, for fear of radiation contamination. The impetus for eradication is at red-alert levels.
EDIT
Although [recreational] hunting does occur in Japan, it is very limited," says Smith, "and hunter numbers are declining by the year, so there are fewer and fewer hunters out there harvesting wild boar. In the Chiba Prefecture, 5,900 hunting licenses (including firearms, wire traps, and box traps) have been issued to date, while in the more northern Myagi Prefecture, 1,876 licensed hunters brought in a whopping 4,964 boars in 2015. Government officials in Myagi, which borders Fukushima, have seen increasing public support for hunting boars since 2011, but that stance is less popular in the rest of Japan.
EDIT
https://www.outsideonline.com/2141891/attack-radioactive-wild-boars