’Tis the season to be jolly, and I’m not talking about Christmas. It’s Fat Bear Week, a pure and wonderful treat for people who need a break from the harsh realities of life.
The competition champions the brown bears of Katmai National Park and Preserve as they complete their transformations from scrawny to elephantine for hibernation. With the internet watching via live Bear Cams, the contestants go beast mode on the millions of sockeye salmon that run from Bristol Bay down the Brooks River.
Then it’s up to voters to interpret the “fattest.”
“There’s no real set criteria that you’re supposed to vote on,” said Mike Fitz, a resident naturalist with Explore.org who started the competition in 2014. “You could vote on just simply the largest bear, or look at relative fatness or consider the extenuating circumstances of each bear’s life like the challenges of raising offspring.”
What is Fat Bear Week?
Think of Fat Bear Week as a March Madness meets Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, but for a bracket of 12 brown bears in southwest Alaska’s remote Katmai National Park and Preserve.
It’s a single-elimination tournament where fans vote online for their favorite contenders as they finish beefing up for winter hibernation. The last two units battle in the finals (on the internet, not real life) for the title of Fattest Bear on Fat Bear Tuesday.
But the larger goal of Fat Bear Week is to promote conservation efforts to preserve places like Katmai.
“In a time where most stories of conservation might be doom and gloom, Fat Bear Week truly allows us to celebrate our bears and the Katmai ecosystem overall,” said Lian Law, a visual information specialist at Katmai.