Fat Bear Week is an annual competition between brown bears that have fattened up to prepare for winter torpor. Katmai National Park celebrates their fat bears because “they exemplify the richness of this area, a wild region that is home to more brown bears than people and the largest, healthiest runs of sockeye salmon left on the planet.”
A tournament-style bracket is available on fatbearweek.org, where voters can pick their favorite fat bear. A series of online chats are available on explore.org, as well as several live cams for watching the bears go about their day.
Katmai National Park has been hosting the competition for 10 years. They also started Fat Bear Junior in 2021, a competition featuring “chubby cubbies.” This year, 12 brown bears competed to earn first place.
Voting for Fat Bear Week 2024 was postponed by one day after male bear #469 attacked and killed female bear #402 on Sept. 30. Cameras near the Brooks River captured the gruesome incident. The uncensored footage revealed the two bears fought for about 10 minutes before #469 managed to finish the fight and begin consuming #402.
“National parks like Katmai protect not only the wonders of nature, but also the harsh realities,” a park spokesperson, Matt Johnson, said in a statement. “Each bear seen on the webcams is competing with others to survive.”
Voting proceeded as normal on Oct. 1 and closed on Oct. 8 with 1,041,124 votes cast. The winner, with a lead of over 40,000 votes, was bear #128, also known as Grazer. She also won last year’s Fat Bear Week. Male bear #32, Chunk, also won second place for the second year in a row.
Grazer and Chunk have a history that goes beyond Fat Bear Week. Both of Grazer’s first-year cubs fell into Brook Falls in July 2024. The river swept the cubs towards Chunk, who began to attack the cubs. Before Grazer was able to stop him, Chunk had injured one of her cubs. The cub later died from its injuries. The surviving cub was featured in 2024’s Fat Bear Junior and won second place.
