Louisiana sets first hunting season for iconic 'Teddy' bear in 2024 as population swells

Louisiana approved the first hunting season for the black bear next year after the state's large carnivore expert assured wildlife regulators the once threatened population has grown enough to sustain a limited harvest.

The Louisiana Wildlife Commission voted unanimously Thursday to establish the season for the iconic "Teddy" bear in December 2024 in which 10 adult bears can be killed.

Commissioners voted to issue the 10 permits through a lottery. Hunting next year will be limited to the northeastern Louisiana Mississippi Delta parishes East Carroll, Madison, Tensas and West Carroll and portions of Catahoula, Franklin and Richland.

"We can certainly have a conservative harvest in limited areas," John Hanks, manager of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries large carnivore program, told commissioners during the October meeting.

Louisiana's black bear population all but disappeared in the 1950s and 1960s.

Today Hanks said the Louisiana black bear population is 1,212, although that only includes numbers from the state's largest bear populations along the Mississippi Delta and in the Atchafalaya Basin. The largest population is in the Tensas National Wildlife Refuge, but bears can't be hunted on the national refuge.

The Louisiana black bear was removed from the Endangered Species List in 2016.

"There are bears all over the state," Hanks said. "This (number) is not all of the bears we have; it's all of the bears we have censused."

Hanks said the current estimate is probably 80% to 90% of the bear population.

Maria Davidson, the large carnivore manager for the Safari Club International Foundation who in 2015 earned a U.S. Wildlife and Fisheries Service award for her efforts restoring the population while she worked at the state wildlife agency, called the hunting season "historic."

"It's been a long time coming," Davidson told commissioners Thursday. "It's timely and necessary."

But others testified against establishing a season, questioning the population numbers from the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and opposing allowing female bears to be hunted.

"I think the proposal is premature," said Dr. Michael Caire, who is part of a lawsuit challenging the removal of the bear from the Endangered Species List. "I'm not opposed to hunting, but I think this is excessive."

Louisiana's fabled black bear became part of American culture in 1902 after President Teddy Roosevelt refused to shoot one that had been trapped and tied to a tree by members of his hunting party.

The episode was featured in a cartoon in The Washington Post, sparking the idea for a Brooklyn candy store owner to create the "Teddy" bear.

Today black bears roam the deep woods of the Tensas National Wildlife Refuge, Upper Atchafalaya Basin and other connecting corridors such as Three Rivers Wildlife Management Area, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The bear's Louisiana recovery was celebrated in 2015 during an event at the Governor's Mansion that Theodore Roosevelt IV attended and the following year during a ceremony at the Tensas National Wildlife Refuge that then U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewel attended.

"I like to think this is partially a result of one of the greatest hunting stories in American history," Roosevelt told USA Today Network in 2015.

But a 2018 lawsuit led by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) with co-counsel Atchafalaya Basinkeeper said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service used "false assumptions and shoddy science" to make its decision for removal.

It contends the bears still need the protection of the Endangered Species Act, saying the recovery corridors don't connect true native populations, a requirement for delisting, and that the estimated population is inflated.

“The Louisiana black bear is a victim of biological malpractice,” PEER officials have said.

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Greg Hilburn covers state politics for the USA TODAY Network of Louisiana. Follow him on Twitter @GregHilburn1.