Fat Bear Week: October 5th - 11th
Which brown bear best transcends the ordinarily large and enters the realm of extraordinarily fat? Your vote decides in Fat Bear Week 2022. As Brooks River’s world-famous bears make their final preparations for winter hibernation, Katmai Conservancy, explore.org, and rangers at Katmai National Park and Preserve celebrate their success.
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What is Fat Bear Week?
Fat Bear Week is an annual, single-elimination tournament. From October 5 – 11, the public votes online for the bear that they think best exemplifies fatness in Katmai's brown bears. The bear with the most votes advances. Only one is crowned Fat Bear Week champion.
After a record number of sockeye salmon returned to Bristol Bay this summer, Fat Bear Week 2022 might be the biggest ever. Through the explore.org bear cams, people from all over the world witnessed crowds of bears eagerly taking advantage of the bounty of returning salmon at Brooks Falls.
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Fat Bear Week 2022 prints, t-shirts and more featuring the artwork of artist Valisa Higman available soon at katmaiconservancy.org! |
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From extra large female bears like 435 Holly and 128 Grazer to huge adult males like 747 and 151 Walker, the enormous brown bears of Brooks River have been packing on the pounds and are ready for the big competition! Can 480 Otis win his fifth Fat Bear Week title, or will another bear steal the crown? Bears 747 and 32 Chunk are giants, but do they have what it takes to hibernate with the title of 2022 Fat Bear Week champion?
“With each passing year, I find myself more in love with the brown bears,” says explore.org founder Charlie Annenberg Weingarten. “From 747 to the beloved Otis and the relationship between sisters 909 and 910 and their cubs, the magic of the bears never ceases to amaze. It is a privilege to be a steward for Katmai National Park and work alongside the Katmai Conservancy and park rangers. Fat Bear Week is for the fans! It is a party that celebrates the March Madness of Nature!”
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Inform your vote by comparing early and late summer photos of the bears. Meet the bears and consider each bear’s life history and the unique challenges it faces in order to survive. Campaign for your Fat Bear Week candidate by using #FatBearWeek on social media. Whet your appetite for Fat Bear Week with Fat Bear Junior on September 29 and 30. Your vote in Fat Bear Junior decides which cub joins the Fat Bear Week tournament.
There’s no fat shaming in Fat Bear Week. Fat bears exemplify the richness of Katmai National Park and Bristol Bay, Alaska – a wild region that is home to more brown bears than people and the largest, healthiest runs of sockeye salmon left on the planet. Learn more at fatbearweek.org and watch live, streaming footage of the bears at Brooks River every day on explore.org.
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The brown bears of Brooks Camp have been fattening up on this year's record salmon run, allowing us to produce another great Fat Bear Calendar! Our 2023 Fat Bear Calendar will feature our latest Fat Bear champion and the wonderful artwork of Valisa Higman. As always, this year's calendar also includes our favorite Fat Bears and cubs, interesting facts and photos from Katmai National Park and Preserve, and this year's Fat Bear Week final bracket.
Please note: Pre-ordered calendars will be shipped, free of charge, by November 2022. Pre-ordered items are shipped separately from available items. Quantities are limited, be sure to order yours today!
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Save the Date: Fat Bear Week Celebration Fundraiser on October 15th |
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Be sure to join us on October 15th at 4 p.m. Eastern / 12:00 p.m. Alaska for Katmai Conservancy’s annual online Fat Bear Week Celebration Fundraiser!
We’ll celebrate the 10th anniversary of the bear cams and the 2022 bear cam season, highlight the Fat Bear Week champion, and learn more about Katmai Conservancy’s important work in support of Katmai National Park and Preserve. Watch the event on explore.org’s Brooks Live Events channel.
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Fat Bear Junior
For these young and maturing bears, it’s a win, and you’re in! During this warm-up event for Fat Bear Week, you decide which cub competes in the annual Fat Bear Week tournament. Join the bracket reveal with Mike Fitz from explore.org, Katmai Conservancy’s Naomi Boak, and Katmai National Park rangers during a live play-by-play on Monday, October 3rd, at 7 p.m. Eastern / 4 p.m. Pacific.
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Katmai National Park Updates
Amber Kraft, Katmai National Park Interpretation and Education Program Manager
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Brooks Camp 2022 Season
Brooks Camp staff awarded over 16,000 bear orientation pins to visitors through the first half of September. We expect about 1,000 more graduates of bear school to receive their “diplomas” by the time the Visitor Center closes at the end of the month. Many visitors hear the story of the bear pin design: created by Perryville student Annalise Kosbruk, whose ancestors evacuated from the Katmai coast in the wake of the 1912 Novarupta eruption.
This summer saw the return of the cultural walk to program offerings. Visitors can join a park ranger for a daily guided walk to the cultural site, or they can check out a key from the Visitor Center to explore the site independently. Brooks Camp rangers also partner with Brooks Lodge to lead a daily program to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.
Amid a record number of visitors and continued COVID-19 outbreaks and mask mandates, staff worked hard to manage visitation to Brooks Falls. Volunteers and rangers worked together to manage waitlists, aided by new restaurant-style pagers to make the process run more smoothly.
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Katmai Culture Camp
Katmai National Park's Culture Camp stems from the Native Village of Perryville’s desire to support Alaska Native youth' connection to their cultural heritage through place-based exploration at Katmai Village.
Katmai welcomed three students and Gerald Kosbruk, president of the Native Village of Perryville, this June for six days! They attended private tours at the King Salmon Visitor Center and the Bristol Bay Historical Society with Katmai Interpretive staff and LaRece Egli, museum director, respectively. Along with these tours, participants got a preview of the Katmai’s own archaeological lab and how artifacts are catalogued for curation. Cultural presentations were given by park archeologist Laura Stelson which included a virtual reality tour using VR headsets of the historic Katmai Village.
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The students and president Kosbruk engaged in hands-on cultural activities, one in artifact identification using a teaching collection provided by Katmai’s curator Katie Myers and another in knapping obsidian to learn how to identify lithic debitage and practice making traditional tools with park archeologist Crissy Phillips. They enjoyed a 3-day trip to Brooks Camp where they visited the cultural site, hiked to other semi-subterranean prehistoric dwelling and camps around the Brooks River National Historic Landmark, got to have their first experience seeing bears at the Brooks Falls platform, and spent an evening grilling out with park superintendent Mark Sturm.
Participants have maintained personal communication with Cultural Resource staff Crissy Phillips and Laura Stelson, sharing how memorable and fun the event was, thanking the park for all the planning to bring it together, and expressing interest in returning to Katmai. Gerald Kosbruk has reported that a lot of people in Perryville are asking questions about Katmai and have shared an interest in seeing their kids attend similar opportunities. Cultural Resource staff is in the process of composing a proposal to support another year and another group of participants to visit for a Culture Camp in 2023!
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Katmai Coastal Wolf and Bear Diet Projects
The DNA metabarcoding laboratory work conducted at Oregon State University to identify prey species within Katmai coastal wolf scats has been completed. Initial findings indicate that sea otters are among the most common prey items for wolves living on the coast, with sea otter DNA found in around 30% of all wolf scats. Fishes were also commonly identified in coastal wolf diet; approximately 25% of wolf scat samples included DNA from salmon, flounder, sand lance, arctic char, sculpin, or other shallow water fish species. Genotyping (individual identification) of coastal wolf samples is also ongoing, and we will soon know how many individual wolves and packs reside along Katmai's shores.
Park staff collected coastal bear scats throughout the 2022 season which will be analyzed with scats collected in 2021 to better understand the breadth of bear diet on the coast and the relative importance of salmon, vegetation, and other forage items.
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Estimating Brown Bear Abundance Using Aerial Stream Survey Data
Katmai National Park supports one of the highest densities of brown bears in the world. Yet monitoring this species is often difficult and expensive therefore population level information is limited. Katmai Biologists have partnered with researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Massachusetts Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit to use aerial surveys to gain an understanding of trends in brown bear abundance. During spring of 2022 the Park Service conducted aerial surveys counting bears throughout the Katmai Preserve. This winter researchers will use these counts to estimate the density of brown bears within the Katmai Preserve.
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These four groovy designs are by artist Anastasia Ward and feature Otis, 747, Holly, and Grazer over unique backgrounds. These designs are available on some large colorful blankets, long-sleeve shirts with hoods, women's tank tops, Nalgene bottles, and stickers. Some items are available now, but more inventory is expected to be available in early October.
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Fat Bear Junior Coloring Contest |
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Celebrating 10 Years of the explore.org Katmai Bear Cams
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Each summer, dozens of brown bears gather at Brooks River in Katmai National Park and Preserve to fish for salmon. Since 2012, the bear cams at explore.org have showcased the world-famous brown bears of Brooks Falls to anyone with an internet connection.
“We’ve witnessed many amazing events on bear cam. I’ll never forget Holly adopting a yearling cub into her family or the exceptional runs of salmon - schools of sockeye so thick that the river sometimes seems to be more fish than water,” says Mike Fitz, a former ranger at Katmai National Park and currently the resident naturalist at explore.org and Board member of Katmai Conservancy.”
Bears return to the river hungry and eager to regain the weight they lost during a long winter of hibernation. This summer, celebrate the best of the bear cam with special live events and video retrospectives at explore.org. The 10-year anniversary celebration concludes on October 15th with the Fat Bear Week Celebration Fundraiser.
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Katmai Cubs Kids Gear Coming Soon! |
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Happy Fat Bear Week from all of us
at Katmai Conservancy, thank you for your support!
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