Louisiana Black Bear Is Removed From "Threatened List"

And now the Louisiana black bear is back. This species has multiplied and fallen off the list of federally protected species, says the government. The state will now take over the task of protecting it.

For decades, there has been work on restoring the species, though some conservationist groups doubted that it could be done. Now, the celebration is that it has at last been achieved, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said Thursday.

This bear once roamed free in Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, but now it is discovered  in at least two spots of eastern Louisiana as well as along the coast.

At the Tallulah office of the Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge, where the largest population of this bear is found, Jewell talked about how this bear inspired the teddy bear---when Roosevelt refused to shoot a tied-up Louisiana black bear for a hunting trophy in 1902.

Just that morning, Jewell came across a rescued seven-week-old cub.

"The work's not over," she said. "The work's really just beginning to bring back more of these hardwoods so Louisiana can help enjoy the kinds of animals that Teddy Roosevelt saw when he was here at the turn of the century."

However, Michael J. Robinson, a conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, pointed out that one animal among the groups counted as Louisiana black bears may actually be from those imported from Minnesota in the 1960s, not the Louisiana black bears.

It was recently revealed that an earlier U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist opposed it, as the upper Atchafalaya Basin area northwest of Baton Rouge, a spot in which the eastern group is found, did not have any black bears till the Minnesota bears.

"Rather than contributing to the black bear population, they threaten to hybridize it," and probably should be sterilized or moved back to Minnesota, Robinson said.

Deborah Fuller, a federal biologist based in Louisiana, said the most recent genetic study indicates "the upper Atchafalaya bear comes out as its own thing. Not as Minnesota," though it may have Minnesota genes.