diff --git a/src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/bazel/rules/java/java_stub_template.txt b/src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/bazel/rules/java/java_stub_template.txt
index 77a0d5449e4422..b3f5070751dfd1 100644
--- a/src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/bazel/rules/java/java_stub_template.txt
+++ b/src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/bazel/rules/java/java_stub_template.txt
@@ -97,9 +97,15 @@ function is_macos() {
 function available_utf8_locale() {
   # Both C.UTF-8 and en_US.UTF-8 do not cause any language-specific effects
   # when set as LC_CTYPE, but neither is certain to exist on all systems.
-  if [[ $(LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 locale charmap 2>/dev/null) == "UTF-8" ]]; then
+  #
+  # https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/pull/17670: Note that the use of "env"
+  # is important in these calls. Without "env", bash itself seems to pick up
+  # the LC_CTYPE change as soon as the variable is defined and may emit a
+  # warning when the locale files are not present. By using "env", bash never
+  # sees the change and the 2>/dev/null redirection does the right thing.
+  if [[ "$(env LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 locale charmap 2>/dev/null)" == "UTF-8" ]]; then
     echo "C.UTF-8"
-  elif [[ $(LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 locale charmap 2>/dev/null) == "UTF-8" ]]; then
+  elif [[ "$(env LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 locale charmap 2>/dev/null)" == "UTF-8" ]]; then
     echo "en_US.UTF-8"
   fi
 }