Judicial doom of an ursid genome

Abstract The Louisiana black bear Ursus americanus luteolus , a subspecies of the subtropical south-central USA, was protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 1992 but removed from coverage in 2016 based on the alleged presence of two viable native populations that had begun to interbreed. However, historical and genetic data show that one population is descended from bears captured in the U.S. state of Minnesota, far to the north, and released on the property of a hunting club in Louisiana. A recent judicial decision ignored those data, deferring to deceptive government claims and effectively dooming the native subspecies to genomic extinction through hybridization with the introduced population.