 After decades of recovery, the Louisiana black bear – the furry beast that inspired the creation of teddy bears – is now officially off the lists for threatened and endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. Landowners as well as state and federal agencies, nonprofits, and universities all played a part in the bears’ population recovery, according to US Fish and Wildlife Services. The US Department of Interior Secretary Sally Jewell attributed the good news to partnerships with private landowners and their work to preserve forestland vital to the survival of the bears during her announcement at the Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge in northeast Louisiana, in the heart of black bear territory. Michael J. Robinson, a conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, said one of the groups being counted as Louisiana black bears may not be that subspecies at all, but descendants of black bears imported from Minnesota in the 1960s. Local Sierra Club chairman Harold Schoeffler, who sued in 1987 to get the bears listed, said he will be talking on Friday with an attorney for Defenders of Wildlife, which handled the earlier lawsuit. Bobby Jindal (R) said the total was about 1,000 last May. Mr. Schoeffler was the one who went to court in 1987 and attained protection for the bears under the Endangered Species Act. A DNA census report released in 2014 projected the number to be between 350 and 600 in the region north of Interstate 10 in Louisiana. Those south of U.S. 90 in south-central Louisiana — the "lower Atchafalaya basin" have not yet been counted.
– After decades of barely clinging on as a species, the bear that inspired teddy bears has bounced back. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced on Thursday that the Louisiana black bear—which appeared in the famous "Teddy's bear" political cartoon after Teddy Roosevelt refused to shoot a tied-up one in 1902—has been taken off both the threatened and endangered species list after a population increase from as few as 80 in 1959 to up to 750 today, the Christian Science Monitor reports. In what authorities say should serve as an example to other areas, the bear rebounded with the help of habitat restoration and wildlife corridors that connected different populations of the bear subspecies, which once ranged all the way from eastern Texas to eastern Mississippi. Jewell praised the "recovery of a species," though the AP notes that some groups think the move is premature. "The work's not over," Jewell told reporters. "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." There hasn't been a legal bear hunt in the state since 1988, and the New Orleans Advocate reports that state authorities, who will now take over work to protect the species, say it's far too early to talk about holding one now. (This has also been a great month for grizzly bears.)