Bayou Teche, one of the most important bayous in south Louisiana, is a former channel of the Mississippi River from 3,800 to 5,500 years ago and now runs 125 miles from Bayou Courtableau in Port Barre to the Atchafalaya River near Morgan City. Its multi-layered geological history appears in the soils of its natural levees, from heavy sands carried by the Mississippi to red clay from the Red River. The diverse land along the bayou provides critical habitat for numerous native species, including the Louisiana black bear, a subspecies of the American black bear native to southern Louisiana and the Atchafalaya River Basin. In the early 1990s, mainly because of habitat loss, its numbers had fallen to about 100 bears and it was listed as federally endangered. In 2001, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service established the 9,028-acre Bayou Teche National Wildlife Refuge, whose bottomland hardwoods and cypress-tupelo forests in six non-contiguous units on both sides of the bayou, together with large expanses of swamps, provide habitat for black bears to roam. The bear’s health depends on the variety of habitats in a deltaic wetland environment like the Atchafalaya River Basin, where it forages on mast such as acorns, nuts, and fruit and dens in secluded sites including ground nests, woody debris piles, tree snags, and live trees, usually bald cypress. Through dedicated conservation efforts, including the creation of refuges, local bear populations recovered and are no longer listed under the Endangered Species Act, while the Atchafalaya River Basin continues to play an essential role in the subspecies’ survival. Bayou Teche and its refuge also support recreation, with paddle trails along old logging canals, wildlife viewing, fishing, hiking, and the Bayou Teche Paddle Trail Corridor as part of the National Park Service’s National Water Trails System.
