{"id":402741,"date":"2025-09-06T13:29:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T13:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/402741\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T13:29:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T13:29:18","slug":"fat-bear-week-is-coming-and-the-competition-will-be-chunky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/402741\/","title":{"rendered":"Fat Bear Week is coming \u2013 and the competition will be chunky"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Fat Bear Week<\/a> is returning this month for its 11th year. The competition is fierce and, above all, incredibly chunky. <\/p>\n

The National Park Service\u2019s competition for the bear with \u201cpeak spherical status\u201d in Katmai National Park, Alaska, takes place from September 23 to 30. <\/p>\n

A dozen Alaskan brown bears compete for the title, although there is no actual prize. Fans can vote for their favorite fat bears online on Explore.org<\/a> every day of the competition between 12 p.m. and 9 p.m. EDT.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom tubby titans to gargantuan gluttons, get ready to cheer for the heftiest bears in Katmai National Park and Preserve\u2019s Brooks River!\u201d park officials wrote in a post<\/a> on social media. <\/p>\n

Last year, the bear known as \u201cGrazer 128\u201d bested 1,200-pound \u201c32 Chunk,\u201d becoming the first Fat Bear Week competitor to win the tournament while caring for a cub. <\/p>\n

\"Last<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s Fat Bear Week champion, \u2018Grazer 128,\u2019 is seen standing in water. The fierce competition starts again on September 23 (NPS)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unknown just how much Grazer 128 weighs, but the bears can reach up to around 1,200 pounds by the late summer and fall. Adult females are smaller than males by as much as 50 percent. Scientists only make educated guesses about the competitors\u2019 weight because they don\u2019t want to disturb the animals.<\/p>\n

Alaska brown bears pack on the pounds to survive the upcoming winter. By November, they enter a den to hibernate where they will not eat or drink until the spring, losing up to a third of their body weight in the process. Survival depends on eating a year’s worth of food in six months and they can gain as many as four pounds a day<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Approximately 2,200 brown bears<\/a> live in the park, which is also home to moose, wolves, and bald eagles.<\/p>\n

This year, rangers are still deciding which bears will make the cut. But when the competition starts, eight live cameras are set up to watch the bears, including two at the falls and an underwater salmon camera. Bears gather at the park\u2019s Brooks River to fish for sockeye salmon until late October. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

A brown bear taking an after lunch snooze in Katmai National Park, Alaska (D. Kopshever, National Park Service.)\"Alaska<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Alaska brown bears fish for salmon. The bears can eat up to four pounds each day (NPS)\"You<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

You can watch many bears at Brooks Falls in the park (Russ Taylor, National Park Service)<\/p>\n

Fat Bear Week started in 2014 thanks to Mike Fitz, a former ranger at the four-million-acre park. Back then, the event just took place over the course of the day. <\/p>\n

It was so well-received that the competition has expanded. There\u2019s now a competition for younger bears. <\/p>\n

As a \u201cchubby cubby appetizer,\u201d the Fat Bear Junior competition will be held from September 18 to 19. The smaller bracket gives younger competitors the chance to advance to the main event.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are very few places in the world where you can go watch wild bears and know them as individuals,\u201d Fitz told The New York Times<\/a> last fall. The contest, he said, \u201ccelebrates the success of brown bears and it tells their stories \u2014 the challenges and the difficulties they face to get fat and survive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3847],"tags":[70,16,15,1717],"class_list":{"0":"post-402741","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115157596027813869","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}