Save the Louisiana Black Bear

Members of the Louisiana legislature have introduced a bill to require a bear hunting season in Louisiana beginning in 2023. Establishing a bear hunt before this unique subspecies has reached true recovery may well be the beginning of the end for the Louisiana black bear.

Let’s hope that we can learn from the experience of our neighbors in Florida where, despite vocal opposition, the state authorized a bear hunt in 2015. At that time, there were roughly 4,000 black bears in Florida, and with interest from 3,776 hunters, over 300 bears were killed (including nursing mothers and juveniles) in just two days, requiring the state to call off the hunt earlier than planned. Afterwards, the public was overwhelmingly opposed to a future bear hunt in Florida and the state has not since reopened bear hunts.

In Louisiana, we have nowhere near the bear population Florida did when it opened a hunt. Rather, the population of Louisiana black bears plummeted from over 80,000 to less than 500 Louisiana black bears estimated in 2016. In that same year, the bear was removed from the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife as a result of decades of degraded habitat, illegal and incidental kills and hunting (which was legal in the state until 1988). Basinkeeper and partners have sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for prematurely delisting the Louisiana black bear without proving recovery of the subspecies and that case remains pending. The population estimates do not show healthy recovery. Two populations supporting true Louisiana black bears–one in the Tensas River Basin with 296 estimated bears and one in the Lower Atchafalaya River Basin with 164 estimated bears–are disconnected, and the population figures are not certain. With such few numbers and great distance separating these two populations, every bear is important to the survival of the subspecies.

Not only should the bear not be hunted until it has reached true recovery–which certainly cannot be claimed with less than 500 Louisiana black bears remaining in two isolated populations–but a hunt should not be considered at least until the court decides whether the bear should remain protected under the Endangered Species Act.

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