SHARI, Hokkaido--When a sightseeing boat sank in rough seas off the coast here two years ago, the ship's captain was unable to call for help on his cellphone. 

Twenty people died in the tragedy while six others remain missing. 

Now, a project for building a cellphone base station at Cape Shiretoko, which lies at the heart of the UNESCO World Natural Heritage site of Shiretoko, has been put on hold for several months.

The effort was started on the central government’s initiative to eliminate cellular dead zones after the Kazu I tour boat sank off the Shiretoko Peninsula on April 23, 2022

The ship’s captain subscribed to the au cellphone network operated by KDDI Corp., which did not serve the area.

The cellphone base construction plan, however, has aroused broad-based concerns over the potential damage it could do to the area’s natural environment and scenery.

The angry reactions forced the project to be suspended temporarily in May just before the construction work was scheduled to begin.

NATURE CONSERVATION GROUPS SPEAK OUT

The telecommunications ministry worked with other parties to set up a “promotion council,” which fashioned a plan for eliminating cellular dead zones by developing base stations at four sites in Shiretoko, some of them new and the others existing.

The promotion council members include ministries and agencies concerned, the Hokkaido prefectural government, the authorities of the two hosting towns of Shari and Rausu, and four mobile carriers.

The plan envisages that 264 solar panels will be installed on a plot of land as large as a soccer field at Cape Shiretoko, one of the planned new base station sites, where no power source is available.

The work will impact a total area of 26,000 square meters, which includes an approximately 2-kilometer land strip for burying cables that lead up to the Cape Shiretoko Lighthouse.

The project will cost about 900 million yen ($6.1 million) in total, of which some 440 million yen will be covered by subsidies from the telecommunications and environment ministries.

The project was approved by the Environment Ministry at the end of March.

No concrete plans, however, were released at an April meeting of the promotion council. Officials revealed the scale of the construction work only when they were asked about the matter during a news conference following the meeting.

Researchers and nature conservation groups lashed out strongly against the plan, arguing that environmental destruction due to the work would hurt the “outstanding universal value” of the World Natural Heritage site designated by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Some suggested that if a blind eye was turned to the plan, Shiretoko could be removed from the World Natural Heritage list.

The project operators had also failed to assess the impact of the work on the white-tailed eagle, a species designated as “vulnerable,” which symbolizes Shiretoko’s biodiversity.

The Shiretoko World Natural Heritage Site Scientific Council held an emergency meeting in June and called on Environment Ministry officials to offer explanations, including on how the plan had been decided upon and why the ministry had greenlit the project.

The council’s members did not accept the answers provided and called on the ministry officials to re-examine the impact of the work on vegetation and wild animals.

KDDI, which undertakes the project, has suspended the work and is conducting a re-examination. The work is not likely to be resumed any time soon.

The telecommunications ministry has cited “requests from local communities” as a rationale for the project’s public interest. The authorities of the two hosting towns, however, are split in their stances.

In May, Shari Mayor Hiroaki Yamauchi called for a review of the plan.

“Our town government made it a categorical condition that Shiretoko’s nature and scenery must be preserved,” said the mayor of Shari, which has jurisdiction over Cape Shiretoko. “The current work plan is not compatible with that condition.”

Yamauchi requested that the central government reconsider the matter after evaluating how the work at other base stations will improve cellphone reception.

The Shari town assembly also adopted with a majority, during its regular June session, a proposal calling for reconsideration of the plan, including by studying if the planned work at Cape Shiretoko is essential and by considering using satellite phones instead.

A growing number of Shari’s residents are also calling for a review of the plan.

A group of volunteer townspeople headed by Sakae Gorai, 87, a former Shari mayor who led Shiretoko to be awarded the World Natural Heritage status, started an online petition campaign and collected 47,628 signatures over 41 days through July 10.

In comparison, the town government of Rausu, located on the eastern side of Shiretoko Peninsula, remains a proponent of the plan.

Town officials argue that even before the boat sank, there had been calls, mostly from fishermen, for cellular dead zones to be eliminated.

Minoru Minatoya, mayor of Rausu, emphasized a need for the Cape Shiretoko base station during the June session of the town assembly.

“I have a duty, as mayor, to safeguard the lives of fishermen,” he said.

VIEWS OF BEREAVED FAMILY MEMBERS

Some of those who lost their family members to the maritime accident are calling for the base station to be built.

“Which is more important, the white-tailed eagle or human lives?” one of them asked rhetorically. “I want safety measures to be taken as long as they are feasible.”

Other bereaved family members, however, see it differently.

“Those matters should not be discussed on the same level,” one of them said. “I believe (our family members) took the boat precisely because they were in the Shiretoko World Natural Heritage site. I want the nature there to be preserved also for the repose of their souls.”

Yuya Kudo, 43, a resident of Kanagawa Prefecture who co-heads a group of bereaved family members of the Shiretoko tour boat accident victims, said he believes there could be a third alternative, even though his group has no plan to consolidate its own position.

“I don’t believe that building a base station there is the only solution,” Kudo said. “One could look for another approach that would both leave Shiretoko’s nature preserved and allow safety to be guaranteed.”

(This article was written by Masatoshi Narayama and Chifumi Shinya.)