July 19, 2021

In an ongoing legal drive to restore Endangered Species Act protections to the iconic but star-crossed Louisiana black bear, a coalition of local and national conservationists today filed motion for summary judgement in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana.

In March 2016, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) had removed the bear, known popularly as the "Teddy Bear" and scientifically as subspecies luteolus, from its List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife. Amidst an outpouring of self-congratulations and publicity, joined in at the highest levels of state and national government, a great conservation victory was proclaimed. Not mentioned was that a reluctant FWS had been pressured through a decade-long battle and finally a lawsuit before listing the bear in 1992. The very same parties who led that earlier struggle are plaintiffs in the new suit.

Listing saved the bear. With protection of luteolus and its habitat, coupled with the efforts of dedicated federal and state biologists (and some continued outside prodding) bear numbers rebounded from a low of around 100 and breeding range increased. Then, FWS began a complex program that supposedly would lead to recovery of the subspecies but that is more likely to spell its doom.

FWS subsequently claimed to have met its key criteria for recovery:  two "viable" populations of luteolus connected by suitable habitat allowing the two to merge and interbreed. One such population was in the Tensas River Basin (TRB) of northeastern Louisiana, the other in the Upper Atchafalaya River Basin (UARB) in the central part of the state. "Connection" had resulted from a 2001–2009 program to artificially translocate some TRB bears to an area between the two populations, known as the Three Rivers Complex (TRC). UARB bears moved into the TRC and interbreeding began. The plan had worked!

There was only one problem.  The UARB bears were not true Louisiana luteolus. They were descended from bears of another subspecies, caught at Minnesota garbage dumps in the 1960s and brought to the UARB by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries for sport hunting. When FWS proposed delisting in May 2015, it tried to pass off the UARB bears as just another population of luteolus. 

Comments on the proposal noted that the very authorities relied upon by FWS for genetic confirmation  of viability and interbreeding had also shown that the UARB had no surviving bear population prior to the 1960s and that the bears there now were closely related to those in Minnesota. FWS then admitted as much, but suggested that the mere possibility that a few native bears had wandered into the UARB somehow converted the whole population there to luteolus. FWS has held to that absurdity, though further DNA studies have confirmed the Minnesota origin of the UARB population.

FWS has never attempted to calculate an estimate of original range and numbers. One may ask how there can be claim of recovery without any idea of what there was originally. Nonetheless, data right from documentation compiled by FWS shows former range was at least 118,000 square miles and numbers at least 80,000. That compares to about 1,800 square miles today, with approximately 296 bears in the TRB and 164 in another historic population in the Lower Atchafalaya River Basin (LARB). FWS has claimed that one more population of Louisiana black bear has been re-established in western Mississippi, but the recent DNA research shows most bears there migrated from a non-luteolus group in Arkansas. Disregarding the Mississippi, the alien UARB, and the hybridized TRC groups, the only existing true Louisiana black bear populations are those of the TRB and LARB.

Incredibly, FWS seems prepared to write off the LARB population and does not even consider it "significant." Yet it is larger than the alien UARB group and contains about a third of all true luteolus. FWS acknowledges it faces many "threats," yet argues it is not "threatened." It has been especially hard hit by the delisting, as formerly restricted commercial and agricultural activity in its habitat again is increasing. Ancient cypress and tupelo trees, ideal for bear dens, are being cut down, and danger is posed by further development and traffic along Highway 90 and future eastward extension of Interstate 49 on that same route. Loss of habitat by the LARB population and the imminent loss of genetic integrity by the TRB population are a devastating combination for the last Louisiana black bears.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, Louisiana Crawfish Producers Association West, Sierra Club and its Delta Chapter, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), Healthy Gulf, and individuals Dr. Michael J. Caire, Ronald M. Nowak, and Harold Schoeffler, the last of whom petitioned for the bear’s listing in 1987. The plaintiffs include avid hunters and fishermen who live and recreate in bear habitat, but who understand that it is not presently possible to ethically hunt the Louisiana black bear with such low numbers and substantial threats remaining.

Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary Judgment

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