Saving Teddy's Bear

The species that inspired the world's favorite stuffed animal is helping land managers revitalize a fragmented landscape.

When President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear during a 1902 hunting trip in the Mississippi woods, he couldn't have known the mythology that would result.

That gesture and the media coverage it received led to worldwide demand for a snuggly stuffed animal fashioned after the Louisiana black bear (Ursus americanus luteolus). But even as "Teddy's bear" proliferated in the form of a child's toy, the species that inspired it has steadily declined in the wild.

Scientists can only guess at historical numbers. But some say thousands and thousands of Louisiana black bear once roamed the rich forested bottomland of eastern Texas, Louisiana, and southern Mississippi. Before white settlement in the 1800s, Native Americans used the bear for clothing, food, and jewelry. Early colonists exported thousands of bear skins and tons of bear grease to Europe, according to historical accounts.

Nearly two centuries later, few bears remain. The hardwood forests and alluvial plains that once provided food and shelter have fallen to the ax and the plow. By 1980 more than 80 percent of the bear's traditional hardwood habitat had disappeared. Many forests were cleared for farming, even though some failed to produce viable crops for landowners.

Today the estimated 300 to 400 surviving bears live in two discrete populations: one in the Tensas River Basin in northeastern Louisiana, the other in the Atchafalaya River Basin in the southcentral portion of the state. A handful of bears live in Iberia and St. Mary parishes (counties) on Louisiana's southwest coast, but they would have to travel more than 150 miles to meet another bear-a distance akin to walking from Philadelphia to Washington, DC.

That's a major concern for a species that depends on large, contiguous areas of forest. Black bears evolved in thick, vegetative, impenetrable habitat. Black bears, which range between 3 and 6 feet tall when standing on their hind legs and weigh between 150 and 300 pounds, use trees for escape, feeding, and shelter. Because of their climbing ability, black bears have been able to elude predators, usually larger members of their own species, humans, and domestic animals.

Louisiana black bears use trees for food and dens. The forest provides a cornucopia of fruits, nuts, meat, and insects, offering everything from blackberry and elderberry to palmetto and walking stick. In autumn bears turn their taste buds to high-carbohydrate meals such as oak and pecan. Black bears will also happily chomp on agricultural crops such as corn, wheat, or soybean-and, of course, honey and bee larvae.

Male black bears have remarkable homing instincts as well and have traveled great distances, some up to 400 miles, to return to their homestead. Mother bears remain deep in the forest canopy, using logged-over slash to build dens and hiding cubs in tall trees for protection from other animals and people.

One population of Louisiana black bear lives on Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge, a 65,000-acre tract in northeast Louisiana. The nearby 19,212-acre Big Lake Wildlife Management Area provides additional habitat for roving bears. But lands north of the refuge show how forest fragmentation can imperil the survival of even a well-established bear population.

Not far from the Refuge, the Deltic Timber Corp. owns land inhabited by about 50 bears, Pelton says. But those bears cannot interact with refuge bears because "an ocean of agricultural fields" separates them. Interstate 20 and Highway 80 snake through those lands as well, creating a concrete roadblock that in 20 years of study only one bear has dared cross.

With the number of bears falling and fragmentation increasing, FWS in 1992 listed the species as threatened. In its 1995 recovery plan the agency warned, "Further loss of occupied habitat added incrementally to past losses could breach the minimum habitat size necessary to ensure continued survival." In other words, more lost habitat could spell the bear's eventual demise.

Only 10 people attended the Black Bear Conservation Committee's (BBCC) first meeting in 1990, just as the FWS posted its intent to list the species. Today, more than 50 organizations take part, including industry, government, nonprofit, and landowner groups. Their goal: "to figure out how to make it in the landowners' best interest to do the right thing."

That meant helping people better understand black bear habitat and behavior. For example, some landowners believed the presence of black hear meant they could no longer cut trees. Bears build wintering dens with logging slash, and mixed-age forests offer nuts and cover. The real danger is in the conversion of land to other types of development, like strip malls.

A combination of federal, state, and nonprofit tree-planting programs just might make a bear corridor a reality. Since 1992 the federal Wetlands Reserve Program, run by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, has helped plant trees on 250,000 acres in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas, according to the agency. Another federal program, the USDA Farm Service Agency's Conservation Reserve Program, has planted 155,00 acres in Louisiana.

Nonprofit organizations are helping as well. AMERICAN FORESTS' Global ReLeaf Forests program is planting two sites for Louisiana black bear habitat: St. Catherine Creek National Wildlife Refuge in Mississippi and Bayou Cocrodie National Wildlife Refuge in Louisiana. The program has planted 1,070 acres with species such as cypress, nutall and overcup oak, and pecan. Such efforts can help public land managers achieve tree-planting goals when funding falls short of the agency's mandate.

Southern tree-planting projects are exciting because they create "almost instant" bear habitat.. Trees grow quickly in the South because of long growing seasons and abundant rainfall. Louisiana black bear use those fast-growing trees for food and cover; other species, such as neotropical birds, deer, rodents, hawk, owl, eagle, fox, and bobcat, utilize the baby trees as well.

If tree planting is done in the right places, it could help restore connectivity of isolated patches of habitat. And help bring the bears back.