Alaska’s Fats Bear Week Is Again and the Competitors Is Larger Than Ever—Right here’s Learn how to Vote for Your Favorites

It’s the battle of the bears in Alaska.

The fattest and floofiest bears in Alaska’s Katmai Nationwide Park are competing as a part of the favored Fats Bear Week, an annual head-to-head competitors geared toward crowning a champion brown bear. And the 2025 competitors is heavier than ever earlier than. 

“Fats Bear Week permits folks from around the globe to actively interact in studying about bears whereas cheering for his or her favourite competitor,” Mark Sturm, the superintendent of Katmai Nationwide Park, stated in an announcement, including “The astonishing salmon runs in Katmai are important to the survival of the park’s ecosystem and brown bears.”

Outside and wildlife fans can go surfing every day to forged their votes on-line for a distinct set of match ups in a March Insanity-style bracket by means of Sept. 30. Every entrant is numbered and photographed twice in the course of the yr with a svelte earlier than photograph often taken in June or July and a hefty after photograph taken in September. The grownup male bears typically common round 700 to 900 kilos by mid-summer, however can swell to over 1,200 kilos by late summer season and fall whereas consuming to arrange for hibernation, in response to the Fats Bear Week contest.

“Fats bears are profitable bears,” the competition defined. “They exemplify the richness of Katmai Nationwide Park and Bristol Bay, Alaska, a wild area that’s house to extra brown bears than folks and the biggest, healthiest runs of sockeye salmon left on the planet.”

One of many contenders on this yr’s competitors is the aptly-named 32 Chunk, a big grownup male with darkish brown fur estimated to weigh much more than 1,200 kilos, fattening up regardless of his damaged (and therapeutic) jaw. One other contestant, named 602, boasts grizzled-brown fur and a “peculiar stomping dance that he shows in moments when his pleasure degree seems to be excessive.” 

The competition, now in its eleventh yr, is organized by Discover.org, an outside reside digital camera community, in partnership with the Katmai Conservancy, which helps conservation efforts within the area. 

Katmai Nationwide Park is one among Journey + Leisure readers’ favourite nationwide parks and residential to one of many largest populations of brown bears. Guests who head to the distant and lesser-visited park should put together for bear encounters by mountaineering in teams, making noise in areas the place visibility is restricted, and preserving their distance from animals. In truth, park goers are prohibited from approaching bears inside 50 yards.