- Fat Bear Week, the social media campaign to crown the country's biggest grizzly, starts Monday.
- Katmai National Park created a "bracket" for people to vote on the bear most deserving of the honor.
- The viral competition attracts upwards of 1 million votes from 100 different countries.
Back in 2014, a ranger at Katmai National Park and Preserve saw some still images pulled by a fan from the park’s “bear cam” video stream. The Alaska park is home to some of the largest grizzlies on earth and has a camera trained on iconic Brooks Falls where waiting bears catch leaping salmon in their jaws.
Both pictures were of the same bear, but taken months apart. One was from the spring and the other from the fall and the difference in the bear’s size was significant.
After gorging itself all spring and summer, the fall bear’s waistline was less svelte than it had been after emerging from its den earlier in the year.
The bear had become, well, pretty fat.
To share the joy of such adorably plump bears, the small team of rangers put together a one-day competition on social media.
They posted spring and fall shots of the bears who frequent the falls and had gained the most winter weight and invited folks to vote on which bear they thought should be crowned “fattest bear of the year.”
That short, small competition has since become a viral sensation, attracting millions of votes from more than 100 countries and spreading out over a week of education and online bear-related celebrations.
“It’s gotten really huge,” said Sarah Bruce, park ranger at Katmai National Park and Preserve, with no pun necessarily intended.
“But it’s great to have eyes up on this part of the world and do some things for conservation and keeping these ecosystems healthy.”
For those that want to participate or simply look at some of this year’s chubbiest bears, Fat Bear Week returns next week.
Brackets will be revealed on Monday, Sept. 22, voting begins on Tuesday and the park and its partners will be publishing a variety of both adorable and educational media through Sept. 30.
“In addition to all of the joy, Fat Bear Week itself brings a very remote, difficult-to-get-to park and makes it very accessible for people to engage with,” Bruce said.
“Folks from all over the world can connect with Katmai National Park ... parks are for the American people. So we want to share that with as many people as we can. They’re public places.”
How to vote for your favorite bear
The brackets of bears will be published at explore.org Sept. 22 on the park’s Facebook and Instagram pages, as well as on The Katmai Conservancy page.
Before and after photos of the 12 competing bears will be posted so fans can begin to determine who they think should be 2025’s winner.
“We tried to put in some compelling stories of the bears,” Bruce said. “If a bear is a sow with cubs, we’ll maybe include her ... and we try to include the more dominant bears, some of the less dominant bears, we try to have younger bears in there as well, just to give like a whole spectrum of the activity that we see on the river.”
Bruce reiterated that this is one way to show folks a varied cross-section of the park’s ecosystems. Millions might be able to login via social media remotely, but only 30 thousand or so visitors make it to the massive, remote national park every year.
Matchups are open for voting Sept. 23-30 from 12 p.m. to 9 p.m. EDT and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. PDT at explore.org but folks can also follow the action on the social media feeds of all the participating organizations.
“We’ll post twice a day throughout the next two weeks, just introducing the bears who are facing off that day and then who the winner of the rounds are in the evening,” Bruce said.
The individual winners will advance, and the ultimate winner will be announced the evening of Sept. 30.
Fat and happy
As for the winners, each bear is a winner in a way.
“A fat bear is a healthy bear,” Bruce said. “Their prize is the millions of salmon that came up the river this year and surviving into the next season.”
It’s those salmon that are the founders of the feast, and the reason the public gets to witness such cute, fat bears at all.
“We get billions of salmon in this watershed that come up every year,” Bruce said. “The reason it has lasted so sustainably and still continues to be a very strong run is because of the indigenous, traditional, ecological knowledge that we have in this area, and the local indigenous people informing how to continue this really successful run.”
Bruce credits the Yup’ik, Sugpiaq, and Dena’ina communities for helping to steward such a healthy ecosystem for the bears and, subsequently, for the fun annual tradition that is Fat Bear Week.
Fans will have to wait for Monday to meet the new competitors, but in the meantime there’s still plenty of bear watching that can be done through Katmai National Park’s webpage and its social media channels. There are even resources for educators who want to bring Fat Bear Week into the classroom.
For new fans, however, there is one running story to follow. For the last two years, bear 128 — affectionately nicknamed “Grazer” — has been voted “fattest bear of the year.”
Will this be the year that another bear takes the crown? You’ll have to login to find out.