“The merely chubby have been winnowed away,” a naturalist intoned. “We are left with a clash of titans.”
After a record-breaking week of public voting, Katmai national park and preserve in Alaska has announced the winner of its “biggest Fat Bear Week yet”.
32 Chunk, frequently described as “the most dominant brown bear on the river”, won the fatness competition despite suffering for most of the season from a broken jaw, which locals suspected came from battling with another male over a female.
The annual bracket-style competition pits different wild bears against each other, based on before-and-after photos of the bears’ weight gain as they prepare for winter, as well as the bears’ personalities and ursine accomplishments.
32 Chunk’s ability to eat huge quantities of salmon and grow fat despite his debilitating injury led him to victory in the public competition, with 96,350 votes compared to Bear 856 – the runner up – who garnered 63,725 votes.
“A fat bear means a successful bear,” Katmai park ranger Ashleigh Monaco said during a Tuesday livestream event. “A fat bear means that bear is more likely to survive hibernation.”
Chunk dethroned 128 Grazer, the female bear who has held Katmai’s fat bear title for the past two years, as the fattest bear on the Brooks River. This year’s competition attracted more than 1.5m public votes – the most so far, naturalist Mike Fitz said during the livestream.
Katmai is known as the home and hunting ground of some of the largest brown bears in the world, where the largest male bears can weigh more than 1,200lbs (544 kg) by fall. The competition features an enviable live camera feed of the bears fishing for salmon, navigating the river and occasionally fighting with each other.
While Fat Bear Week, which was started in 2014, was designed to support greater public awareness of the bears and their ecosystem, the contest has also included levels of on-camera drama that surpass even those of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
During the summer of 2024, 32 Chunk killed the young cub of reigning fat bear champion 128 Grazer – even though the mama bear fought Chunk in a desperate effort to save the cub. The death was captured on the the live cameras. 128 Grazer went on to beat Chunk in the fat bear competition by more than 40,000 votes.
That same year, the fat bear competition was delayed after one of the contestants was killed by another, less-fat bear, which was also captured on livestream.
Despite his role as the villain of previous years, Chunk, who has “narrowly-set eyes, dark brown fur, and a prominent brow ridge” and “a distinctive scar across his muzzle”, won over the public this year with his story of perseverance.
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He appeared in the park in June with a freshly-broken jaw. Wild bears in Katmai do not receive veterinary care, and Chunk’s injury was expected to be permanent, according to his contest profile, which noted that the injured alpha bear “adjusted his behavior to avoid most direct confrontations with other large male bears”.
Chunk’s broken jaw had left viewers wondering: “Is he even going to be able to fish? Will he even survive?” Naomi Boak, a media and communications executive who has been voting in the Fat Bear Week bracket for the past 11 years, said on the livestream. What happened, instead, was Chunk “gaining girth beyond what anybody could have possibly imagined with that injury”.
Chunk ultimately triumphed over an older male bear, 856, despite the fact that “856’s skinny picture was incredibly skinny,” Boak noted before the results were announced.
Chunk’s weight was estimated at 1,200 pounds by contest organizers. While they do not weigh individual bears during the contest because of safety concerns, Chunk and others have had their density scanned to bolster weight estimates in the past using laser technology called Lidar.
128 Grazer, though no longer officially the park’s fattest bear, continued her redemption arc this year after the trauma of 2024: her current cub, 128 Jr, won the competition for this year’s fattest bear cub, making them essentially the “royal family” of the park, Monaco, one of the park rangers, said during the Tuesday livestream.
“No matter who wins fat bear week, each bear was fully committed to the effort. They needed to get fat to find success,” Fitz, the naturalist, reminded the livestream audience.
“What a joy this week has been, because – just so many very fat bears,” Boak said.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
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