By Ronald Nowak, 25th September 2025
Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt, United States president, 1901‒1909, was a renowned wildlife conservationist, but also a fervent big game hunter. In 1902, Roosevelt unsuccessfully pursued bears in the southern bottomland forests. Wishing to please the President, his guide, Holt Collier, former slave and Confederate Army cavalryman, located a bear, captured it, and secured it with rope. When Roosevelt arrived, others in the party urged him to shoot the animal. Whether from sportsmanship or political concern, Roosevelt refused. Trailing reporters relayed the story to newspapers. A businessman began manufacturing a plush toy bear for children, the Teddy Bear, now known worldwide. But what happened to the real bears that inspired it?
Clifford Berryman’s cartoon in the Washington Post, 16 November 1902, showing Theodore Roosevelt declining to shoot the bear captured by Holt Collier. The writing may also refer to a boundary line dispute between Louisiana and Mississippi, which Roosevelt sought to settle.
I didn’t know bears existed in my home state. Biology wasn’t my major, but I happened to pick up James Tanner’s 1942 book, The Ivory-billed Woodpecker, about his study along the Tensas River in north-eastern Louisiana. He said there were bears in the area—wolves and panthers too. But all three mammals, and the ivory-bill, were in decline or already gone. My life changed; I would become an endangered species biologist. I particularly wanted to save Louisiana’s three large carnivores: the red wolf Canis rufus, the Florida panther Puma concolor coryi and the Louisiana black bear Ursus americanus luteolus.
Louisiana black bear Ursus americanus luteolus of the Lower Atchafalaya population, at Avery Island. Photo: Pam McIlhenny.
Surprisingly, I did—at least temporarily. I compiled a report on the red wolf, convincing the government to list it as endangered, then did research supporting its specific distinction. With a WWF grant of just USD 1,700, I hired a noted hunter, Roy McBride, and his dogs. We confirmed the panther still existed in Florida and could be captured alive, thereby stimulating a massive effort to study and conserve the animal.
Tragically in the early 1940s, just after Tanner’s work, a virgin forest formerly preserved by the Singer Sewing Machine Company was felled, dooming the ivory-bill and most bears there. Surveys estimated only 50 bears survived in the Tensas, and another 50 in the Lower Atchafalaya Basin of southern Louisiana. Those two populations would soon be all that remained of luteolus, which once occupied about 300,000 km2.
Ranges of four current populations of bears in Louisiana. Inset shows the historical range of luteolus in Louisiana (LA), Mississippi (MS), Arkansas (AR) and Texas (TX), as mapped by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, as well as the location of the state of Minnesota (MN). Source: Nowak, 2025.
In 1964–1967, Louisiana’s wildlife agency captured bears in Minnesota, far to the north, releasing most on a hunting club’s property in the Upper Atchafalaya Basin; some survived and began a population. A 1975 state publication verified this population stemmed from the introduction and that the two native populations neared extinction. When that information reached my employer, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Office of Endangered Species, I contacted states for more data. Fearing federal interloping, the Louisiana agency complained, terminating my review.
Our branch of the Office was bureaucratically atypical—mostly young PhDs, eager to develop the Lists of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants. They often worked at night and on weekends for no pay. Protocol was usually followed but if law and science were disregarded, they sometimes went beyond the agency.
In 1983, the Fish & Wildlife Service tried opening the threatened Minnesota wolf to hunting, but failed to meet Endangered Species Act specifications. I refused involvement and supported successful outside lawsuits. Supervisors wanted me fired but were overruled by the agency director, seeking to avoid negative publicity.
The wolf experience may have made me think we were invulnerable. I pressed for review of the Louisiana bear, and a supportive field office facilitated travel to the animal’s range and to museums with relevant specimens. My 1986 report, showing luteolus jeopardized by hybridization with Upper Atchafalaya bears, reached Harold Schoeffler, like Roosevelt an environmentalist and hunter. In March 1987, he formally petitioned to list luteolus as endangered, legally forcing review. But by October, our branch had been dismembered, the entire Office abolished soon thereafter. I was assigned to assess foreign species but everything I tried to do was stymied.
Schoeffler sued, forcing listing in January 1992. With severe penalties for poaching, and other conservation measures, bear numbers rose to about 300 in the Tensas and 160 in the Lower Atchafalaya by 2014. The bear became a cause célèbre, the legislature named it state mammal, bear festivals were held and a save-the-bear licence plate was sold.
Louisiana black bear licence plate on the author’s sister’s car in New Orleans. Photo: Caren Rosenzweig.
However, as my article explains, practically from the time of listing, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service was considering measures that might facilitate delisting. A 1995 recovery plan said such could be done merely if two viable and interbreeding populations were present, one in the Tensas and one anywhere in the Atchafalaya Basin, making no distinction between the Upper (introduced) and Lower (native) populations. In 2001, the agency began moving native Tensas females to the Three Rivers area, where they could interbreed with nearby invasive Upper Atchafalaya males, and ignored genetics studies by the agency’s own experts showing those males were not luteolus.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal announces proposed delisting, 19 May 2015. Front row, left to right: Robert Barham, Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries; Steve Guertin, Deputy Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Governor Jindal; Theodore Roosevelt IV, great grandson of the U.S. president. Photo: KNOE News.
Public comments claimed the whole process politically motivated. That’s hard to prove but Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal did celebrate the proposed delisting just before opening his campaign for nomination as Republican Party candidate for U.S. President. And Interior Secretary Sally Jewell celebrated the March 2016 final delisting, augmenting praise by U.S. President Barack Obama of the Democratic Party.
The article covers unsuccessful lawsuits, particularly when a judge disregarded genetic evidence and ruled the Upper Atchafalaya bears were luteolus. That decision allowed a December 2024 hunt, during which 10 bears were killed in the Tensas, one near record size. For 2025, 26 permits are planned including eight for a zone containing the Lower Atchafalaya population, which even the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service acknowledges may face numerous threats and for which viability has not been determined. The hunts could also disrupt dominance hierarchies, in which large males displace others and mate with numerous females. Loss of dominant Tensas males may facilitate impregnation of native females by young males dispersing from the introduced/hybrid groups. This will ravage the historic bloodline of luteolus and seal the fate of the Teddy Bear.
Mr Deron Santiny with the 316 kg bear he took during the December 2024 hunting season in the Tensas area. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries presented Mr Santiny with the Teddy Roosevelt Award, now given each season to the hunter who takes the largest bear. Photo used with permission of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
The article Judicial doom of an ursid genome is available open access in Oryx—The International Journal of Conservation.
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