ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Let the chunk-off begin.

Voting starts Wednesday in the annual Fat Bear Week contest at Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve, with viewers picking their favorite among a dozen brown bears fattened up to survive the winter.

The contest, which is in its 10th year, celebrates the resiliency of the 2,200 brown bears that live in the preserve on the Alaska Peninsula, which extends from the state’s southwest corner toward the Aleutian Islands. The animals gorge on the abundant sockeye salmon that return to the Brooks River, sometimes chomping the fish in midair as they try to hurdle a small waterfall and make their way upstream to spawn.

A bear’s death delays the contest

Organizers introduced this year’s contestants on Tuesday – a day late – because one anticipated participant, a female known as Bear 402, was killed by a male bear during a fight on Monday. Cameras set up in the park to livestream footage of the bears all summer captured the killing, as they also captured a male bear killing a cub that slipped over the waterfall in late July.

“National parks like Katmai protect not only the wonders of nature, but also the harsh realities,” park spokesperson Matt Johnson said in a statement. “Each bear seen on the webcams is competing with others to survive.”

The nonprofit explore.org, which streams the uncensored bear cameras and helps organize Fat Bear Week, on Tuesday hosted a live conversation about the death. Katmai National Park ranger Sarah Bruce said it wasn’t known why the bears started fighting.

“We love to celebrate the success of bears with full stomachs and ample body fat, but the ferocity of bears is real,” said Mike Fitz, explore.org’s resident naturalist. “The risks that they face are real. Their lives can be hard, and their deaths can be painful.”

Packing on the pounds for survival

The bracket this year features 12 bears, with eight facing off against each other in the first round and four receiving byes to the second round. They’ve all been packing on the pounds all summer.

Adult male brown bears typically weigh 600 to 900 pounds (about 270 to 410 kilograms) in mid-summer. By the time they are ready to hibernate after feasting on migrating and spawning salmon – each eats as many as 30 fish per day – large males can weigh well over 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms). Females are about one-third smaller.

A taste for seagulls and a bear named after a jumbo jet

Bear 909 Jr., who last week won the Fat Bear Junior competition for the second time, will face Bear 519, a young female in the first round. The winner will face the defending champion, Grazer, described as one of the most formidable bears on the river.

Another first-round match pits Bear 903, an 8-year-old male who was given the nickname Gully after he developed a taste for seagulls, against Bear 909, the mother of Bear 909 Jr. The winner faces a two-time champion, a bear so large he was given the number of the equally massive airplane, Bear 747.

One of the biggest bears ate 42 salmon

In the other half of the bracket, the first-round match has Bear 856, an older male and one of the most recognizable bears on the river because of his large body, challenging a newcomer, Bear 504, a mother bear raising her second known litter. The winner will face perhaps the largest bear on the river, 32 Chunk, a 20-year-old male who once devoured 42 salmon in 10 hours. He’s estimated to weigh more than 1,200 pounds.

The last first-round match has Bear 151, a once-playful young bear nicknamed Walker now showing more dominance, versus Bear 901, a solo female who has returned to the river after her first litter did not survive. The winner will face Bear 164, called Bucky Dent because of an indentation in his forehead.

Voting in this year’s tournament-style bracket is open through Oct. 8.

More than 1.3 million votes were cast last year.

Video in player above is from previous coverage.

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTVF) – For the last four years, deaths caused by drug overdoses have been increasing. Currently, they’ve reached a record high as fentanyl and methamphetamine continue to spread across Alaska.

Prior to 2018, drug overdose deaths had remained relatively stagnant in the last frontier. Those deaths actually decreased to near double digit number in 2018. However, drug attributed deaths have since been climbing and 2023 saw an increase of 110 deaths compared to 2022.

“Between 2014 and 2023, 1,757 drug overdose deaths have occurred in Alaska.” That’s according to the 2023 Drug Overdose Mortality Update released by the Alaska Dept. of Health. The report goes over the race, age, location, and ethnicity of those that died from drug use as well as which drugs have been most prevalent in those fatalities.

Most of these drug overdose deaths are the result of unintentional overdoses with only 7% being attributed to suicides. This in part due to the increasing lethality of street drugs that often contain fentanyl.

The increasing lethality of street drugs does play a part in the increase of overdose deaths as that figure rose 44.5% between 2022 and 2023 reaching a record high of 357 deaths. That figure has increased drug related deaths in the state to an average of nearly 50 people per 100,000.

Men made up a majority of all cases but women still accounted for nearly 37% of all cases.

Breaking the numbers down by race, white Alaskans saw the highest total of drug related deaths in 2023 at 170. That number has been relatively high since 2020 when it nearly doubled from just 77. Despite the number for this demographic being the highest, the rate of drug attributed death remains relatively low at 34.2 people per 100,000. Comparatively, Alaska Natives and American Indians had the highest rate and the second highest to for 2023 at 114 per 100,00 and 119 in total. Those figures marking a major jump from just 82 deaths in 2022.

Mixed race, black and Hispanic Alaskans also had number in the double digits in 2023 with all three showing steady increases over the years. Asian and Pacific Islanders retained single digit figures however.

Breaking down the data by age, it was middle aged and older adults that saw the highest numbers in 2023 as well as year prior. 35-44-year-olds had the highest total at 115 with a rate of 110 per 100,000. This was the only group with triple digit numbers as the next highest totals were 75 and 67 pertaining to 25-34-year-olds and 45-54-year-olds respectively. Seniors and youth consistently had the lowest numbers.

These increase have been seen in nearly every region of the state with the exception of the North Slope and the Southwest. The growing number of drug related deaths is mostly coming out of Anchorage however. There the number of drug overdose deaths increased over 300% in just four years. In 2019 they had just 57 drug related deaths and in 2023 that had increased to 230.

Opioids remain the biggest perpetrator of these deaths causing 286 of the 357 drug overdose deaths in 2023. 265 of those being tied to fentanyl.

Methamphetamine was another common factor attributed to 193 deaths.

While those combined numbers surpass the total of 357, that’s because many of the overdose deaths were attributed to at least two substances and quite a few also attributed to just one substance.

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The US Army Corps of Engineers failed to consider how a proposed mine’s waste dam in Alaska could spill large amounts of harmful chemicals such as arsenic and antimony into surrounding environments, a federal court ruled.

The US District Court for the District of Alaska said the agency should have studied a spill of more than 0.5% of the tailings storage facility connected to Donlin Gold LLC’s mine after “erroneously” identifying catastrophic spill as a worst case scenario that didn’t warrant examination, according to an opinion filed Monday.

Judge Sharon L. Gleason ruled the Corps’ final environmental impact statement violated …