You’ve probably never even heard of Fat Bear Week, which starts tomorrow, 5 October 2023! Neither had we until we stumbled across a reference to it on a television nature programme about the wildlife of Alaska. Based in Alaska’s Katmai National Park, Fat Bear Week looks at how well the Park’s brown (a.k.a. grizzly) bears are preparing for the coming winter by putting on loads of weight. It’s a competition in which the fattest bear – as voted for by the general public – is the winner.

To prepare for hibernation Katmai’s grizzlies have to add a huge amount of weight, which they achieve by catching and eating vast quantities of salmon. Adult males can put on up to 500 pounds (230 kg) during the salmon run, which they achieve by wolfing down 30 to 40 fish in a single day, for week after week. Extraordinary!

In no way can Fat Bear Week be called serious science, but beneath the surface lurks a noble purpose – to encourage ordinary people to engage with the natural world, and to understand more about the challenges wildlife faces when the seasons change.

The competition began in 2014 as Fat Bear Tuesday, organised by a park ranger who got visitors to the park to vote – based on “before” and “after” photos – for the bear that had put on the most weight during the season.

Such was the level of interest that the following year the competition was extended to a whole week. The photos and voting were also made available online, together with video footage of the contenders, thus enabling the whole world – including bloggers in the UK! – to take part.

When I log on to the Fat Bear Week website tomorrow to check out the candidates and cast my vote, it will also be an opportunity to wallow in nostalgia for a while. Mrs P and I spent three fabulous weeks in Alaska in 2009, and one of the most memorable parts of our visit was a trip to Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park.

Brooks Falls is world-famous as the place to watch brown bears attempting to catch salmon that are moving upriver to their spawning grounds. It’s an iconic sight that has featured in countless television nature programmes, and experiencing it for myself has been one the highlights of my life spent watching wildlife.

Brown bears are potentially dangerous to humans, so it’s important to take care around them.  Unsurprisingly, therefore, the first thing you’re told when you arrive at Brooks Falls is that you’re now in bear country.  Bears rule at Brooks Falls, and tourists have to fit in.

One of the worst things any tourist can do is catch a bear by surprise, and to avoid this visitors are advised to yell out “Hey bear!” at regular intervals when following the trail to and from the falls.  We did so, very loudly, and although we had many good sightings of bears – in the woods, in the river, and in and around our camp – uncomfortably close encounters were successfully avoided.  Mrs P’s photos, which I’ve used to illustrate this post, give a good indication of the fun we had.

But sometimes things don’t go quite to plan. On the day we were due to fly out to continue our Alaska adventure elsewhere, I clearly remember exiting a small restroom close to where we were due to board our light plane, to be confronted, just a few metres away, by a bear emerging from the woods. We looked at one another in mutual shock and dismay! I made a hasty return to the restroom, and the bear – equally alarmed, I’m sure – retreated into the woods, never to be seen again. Wildlife encounters don’t get much better than that.

Viewed on the internet from several thousand miles away, Fat Bear Week promises to be less of a high adrenaline experience. Which is not to say that it will necessarily be without drama. In 2022, the competition was marred by attempted election fraud, with more than 7,000 fake votes being cast for a bear called Holly!

When the scam was discovered a recount was ordered, and in the end Bear 747 was declared the winner and became the official Fat Bear champion of 2022. Bear 747 was first identified as a sub-adult in 2004, meaning that he’s now in his mid-20s and clearly an outstanding representative of his species.

Hopefully Bear 747, Holly and numerous other magnificent brown bears will put on a show for me, and other followers of Fat Bear Week, in the days to come.

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UPDATE – 11 OCTOBER 2023 – The results are in, and I’m delighted to announce we have a new Fat Bear champion. The final of this year’s Fat Bear competition was between bear #32, a.k.a. “Chunk”, and bear #128, a.k.a. Grazer. Their photos show both of them to be truly enormous, but the winner with 108,321 votes (including mine!) was Grazer, comfortably beating Chunk’s 23,124 votes. Happily there has been no suggestion of electoral fraud this year, and Grazer is without doubt a worthy winner. (photos below have been sourced with grateful thanks from the Explore.org website. )

The Explore.org website also provides biographical details of Grazer, as follows

Grazer was introduced to Brooks River as a young cub in 2005. Since then, she’s become one of the best anglers at Brooks River. She can fish successfully in many locations including the lip, far pool, and plunge pools of Brooks Falls. She can chase down fleeing salmon in many parts of the river or patiently scavenge dead and dying salmon after they spawn. Grazer will also fish overnight at Brooks Falls.

Grazer is a particularly defensive mother bear who has successfully raised two litters of cubs. She often preemptively confronts and attacks much larger bears —even large and dominant adult males—in order to ensure her cubs are safe. Her behavior produced benefits beyond the protection of her cubs. In summer 2023, many other bears remembered her reputation and Grazer maintained a high level of dominance even though she was single. For example, a large adult male, 151 Walker, regularly avoided her approach. Grazer’s combination of skill and toughness makes her one of Brooks River’s most formidable, successful, and adaptable bears.

Source: Explore.org website, retrieved 11 October 2023

So Grazer was around in 2009, when Mrs P and I visited Katmai. Maybe we’ve already met her?