The competition, which is in its twelfth 12 months, celebrates the resilience of the two,200 brown bears that dwell within the protect on the Alaska Peninsula.
Revealed On 30 Sep 2026
After per week of fierce competitors, Backpack emerged victorious as Fats Bear Week champion, the heftiest bear in Alaska’s Katmai Nationwide Park and Protect.
The nonprofit operating the longstanding contest introduced on Tuesday that the bear, recognized for his pacifist nature, was the winner with greater than 100,000 votes, giving him a detailed win over Bear 910 with simply over 50 p.c of the ballot.
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The competition, which is in its twelfth 12 months, celebrates the resilience of the two,200 brown bears that dwell within the protect on the Alaska Peninsula, which extends from the state’s southwest nook in direction of the Aleutian Islands. Fats Bear Week was began in 2014 as an interactive method to inform the general public about brown bears, the coastal cousins of grizzlies.
Final 12 months’s winner, Chunk — recognized formally as Bear 32 — clinched his victory at an estimated 1,200 kilos. He was handily defeated within the first spherical of competitors this 12 months by Bucky, who went on to lose a face-off towards Backpack, recognized formally as Bear 89.
The occasion this 12 months featured 16 bears vying for the heavyweight title in a single-elimination, bracket-style event. All voting is finished on-line, and the winner was declared on Tuesday night after the ultimate ballot closed. The general public may watch the bears on discover.org’s livestream cameras earlier than deciding on their favorite.
“Fats bears are profitable bears,” the nonprofit says on its web site. These bears gorge themselves on the plentiful salmon that return to the Brooks River beginning in late June. It’s there that they’ll stuff themselves to build up the fats reserves they might want to survive the winter. To be featured within the contest, the bears should frequent the world across the river.
Son of ex-champion
Backpack is the son of former Fats Bear Week champion Holly, who launched him to the Brooks River when he was a first-year cub in 2006. His title was impressed by his behavior of climbing onto his mom’s again once they swam the river. This 12 months’s followers cheered on Backpack within the contest’s Instagram feedback, noting his lineage and repute as a mild big.
“In contrast to many giant grownup male bears, Backpack hasn’t proven a lot aggression towards his opponents,” his contestant profile reads.
Backpack makes use of his “quiet energy” quite than brawling and is commonly seen in wildlife cameras sitting on a rock downstream, showing to absorb the surroundings round him.
He defeated Bear 910, who can also be the daughter of a former champion: 409 Beadnose.
Grownup male brown bears sometimes weigh between 600 and 900 kilos (270-410kg) in midsummer. By the point they’re able to hibernate after feasting on migrating and spawning salmon, giant males can weigh greater than 1,000 kilos (454kg). Females are about one-third smaller. Bears could every eat as many as 30 fish a day this time of 12 months, working onerous to eat a 12 months’s price of meals in about six months.
Throughout winter hibernation, bears don’t eat or drink and may lose one-third of their physique weight.
Fats Bear Week’s contestants additionally included 5 bear households, in recognition of the record-high variety of households and cubs on the river this summer season. A mom should feed and defend her cubs whereas additionally consuming sufficient energy to maintain herself by way of hibernation. Cubs typically face the chance of assault from different bears resulting from territorialism or meals shortage.
Bear 132 and her three spring cubs superior to the semifinals, however misplaced out to Bear 910.
She has grow to be one of many largest and most skilled mom bears at Brooks River, in keeping with her contestant profile. In mid-July, one in all her cubs turned separated from the household for a number of days, wandering the river hall alone. The cub was reunited with the household a couple of days later.
