Alaska
In Alaska’s Fat Bear Week, there’s no party like a salmon party
Fats Bear contestant 128 Grazer is roughly 17-19 years previous. She has a light-weight coat within the spring that darkens within the fall, however she retains her distinctive fluffy blonde ears.
Lian Legislation / NPS Picture
In some ways, it’s a mannequin election. The marketing campaign runs for just one week, and all of the candidates are well-grounded and devoid of hypocrisy.
In truth, all of the candidates are enthusiastically out for themselves — as a result of they’re bears, in spite of everything, embracing the ursine urge to eat like there is no tomorrow and fortify themselves for winter hibernation.
Fats Bear Week formally begins on Wednesday, celebrating the laborious work bears do to outlive, and giving all the remainder of us a motive to gawk at huge animals and spawning salmon of their dwelling in Katmai Nationwide Park in Alaska.
How Fats Bear Week works
The 12 brown bears are positioned right into a bracket, the place voters resolve who ought to advance from every matchup. Voting opens every day at 12 p.m. ET, operating from Oct. 5 by means of Oct. 11.
The competition highlights the superb transformation bears should make after they emerge from hibernation, emaciated and hungry. From the center of summer season to the autumn, a median male grownup can go from weighing 600-900 kilos to nicely over 1,000 kilos, in keeping with the Katmai web site.
tk
Nationwide Park Service
Contestants are tracked by their numbers, however veteran animals are identified by names like the big male Chunk, or the blond-eared feminine Holly. Then there’s 747 — who would not want a nickname as a result of his quantity and dimension each echo the well-known jumbo jet.
This 12 months’s defending champ, Otis, additionally received the primary Fats Bear contest eight years in the past.
Followers usually observe their favourite bears on webcams within the park, watching as they attempt to extract sockeye salmon from rapids and waterfalls alongside the Brooks River.
It helps to be an enormous bear with an enormous character
Whereas the competitors favors girth, bears usually develop into sentimental favorites, thanks to private tales specialists have gleaned from years of remark.
Take Holly, aka 435, who has guided a number of cubs on troublesome paths to turning into profitable adults — together with 503, whom she adopted after he was left alone as a yearling cub.
Fats Bear candidate 435 Holly is in her mid to late 20s, making her one of many older bears to make use of Brooks River. She has a light-colored coat paying homage to a toasted marshmallow, and is understood for adopting a number of orphaned cubs.
E. Johnston / NPS Picture
“A bachelorette’s life this summer season afforded her the chance to focus on her personal wants,” in keeping with the Fats Bear Week web site at Discover.org.
Feminine grownup brown bears normally weigh a couple of third lower than males.
In the event you want bear evaluation, park workers and naturalist Mike Fitz of Discover.org just lately mentioned the 2022 area in a video.
Who you bought in 2022?
Whereas incumbents usually take pleasure in a bonus, rebel newcomers add spice to this 12 months’s combine.
One of many youngest bears within the bracket is a feminine subadult dubbed 335, who’s Holly’s daughter.
“Subadults are primarily the youngsters of the bear world,” from round 2 and a half to five years previous, Katmai Park Ranger Lian Legislation mentioned, describing how they’re blocked from the perfect fishing spots and be taught to dwell away from their moms for the primary time.
As that narrative suggests, the bears’ backstories are a good way for the park to coach the general public in regards to the wide selection of bear behaviors, from their fishing and survival methods to how they work together with different animals.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see extra, go to https://www.npr.org.