Fat Bear Week, the annual celebration of brown bears getting to go into hibernation at Katmai National Park and Preserve starts this week with a junior bear contest. Competing against each other for the most votes the four cubs square against each other in a bracket-style tournament to claim the title of Fat Bear Junior Champion. The winner will have the chance to play against their elder bears in the coming week.
The junior competition was introduced in 2021, as a means to make people more interested in Fat Bear Week, the nine-year-old event that draws attention to the brown bears of Katmai with the aid of livestream cameras located in the park. It is geared towards first-year cubs and yearlings. These are bears around 18 months old.
“Fat is what that drives the existence of brown bears during hibernation. And a big bear makes a bear that’s successful,” said Mike Fitz who is a naturalist at Explore.org. “Fat Bear Week as well as Fat Bear Junior is a means to celebrate the accomplishments of brown bears while they prepare for the winter months. It also honors the ecosystem and its health, which helps these bears, particularly the sockeye salmon that migrates through Bristol Bay into the Naknek River Watershed.”
Alongside two first-year cubs This year’s junior bear competition will also feature one yearling cub as well as a singleton cub in the first year of its life. There will also be an infant cub that had been separated from his mother, and was raised with her aunt.
“Adoption is not common in brown bears and the circumstances leading to it are usually ambiguous or unresolved,” Fitz said. “What I believe that led to adoption in this particular year is the bonding between the bear families and the mothers from last year.”
Fitz and the rangers of the park’s national headquarters have been on a close eye on the bear cubs through the entire summer long. They can be able to tune in through Explore.org’s livestream cams for bears which offer a peek on the daily lives bears who live near Katmai’s Brooks River Falls.
The focus this week is on the largest bear, Fitz insists that the bear don’t deserve all the praise. The youngest winner will prove to be a thank you for the mom who brought it up. He spoke about his singleton cub, who was raised by a second mother.
“The cub was not at ease standing on the bank of Brooks River on its own however, the cub wanted to be with mommy,” Fitz said. “Even at just two months old, and was able to walk to the bottom of the River, occasionally it would be washed downstream. We witnessed it fall on top of Brooks Falls several times this year. It’s grown significantly in size, and its overall size indicates that bear cubs are single do not have litter mates, and enjoy advantages due to their access to mother’s meals.”
In within the Bristol Bay region of Alaska, Katmai National Park and Preserve is home to one of the most healthy and largest runs of salmon sockeye that are left on Earth. In addition, the region contains more brown bears than human beings.
“Each animal in Fat Bear Junior is an individual with a story to tell about his or her life and the struggle to survive,” Fitz said. “This is an extremely unique experience for wildlife enthusiasts to meet animals as individuals and not as groups.”
Fitz claims she believes that Fat Bear Week not only highlights the health of the bears but is also an opportunity to increase awareness all over the world on the condition of Bristol Bay. Bristol Bay region.
“Each individual shows the different ways of life, a different way of living and that’s an incredible occasion,” he said. “When we observe wildlife, usually we don’t have any information about them.”
Voting online on The Fat Bear Junior competition begins on Thursday, at 8.30 a.m. It is possible to cast your vote through explore.org.
