Welcome to Fat Bear Week 2019! Katmai National Park's bears spent the summer gorging on 4,500-calorie salmon, and they've transformed into rotund giants, some over 1,000 pounds. The park is holding its annual playoff-like competition for the fattest of the fat bears (you can vote online between Oct. 2 and Oct. 8), and Mashable will be following the ursine activity.
Drew Hamilton knew it immediately.
"Holly is going to win," he texted me.
Hamilton, who views bears professionally as an Alaskan bear viewing guide, landed in remote Katmai National and Preserve in late September. He was there to spy the bears before they climbed hills, dug dens, and went into hibernation.
He easily spotted Bear 435 "Holly," who the park officially announced Tuesday as the winner of the 2019 Fat Bear Week contest.
"It's almost like the river got higher when Holly went in the water to catch a fish," said Hamilton.
"You almost get the sense watching her that she’s getting fatter before your eyes," he added.
"It's almost like the river got higher when Holly went in the water to catch a fish."
Holly handily defeated male Bear 775 "Lefty" in the Fat Bear Week finals. The contest, intended to educate people about bears, true untrammeled wilderness, and conservation, was determined by the public's (perhaps yours?) votes on Facebook. And it was hard to argue with Holly's girth.
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Like many of Katmai's large brown bears, Holly spent the summer exploiting Katmai rivers, which were bountiful with sockeye salmon. It's a testament to the pure, undeveloped region, Bristol Bay, where nature is operating at full throttle.
The area is home to the richest run of sockeye salmon on Earth.
And unlike some previous years, Holly didn't need to feed any cubs. Each salmon she dragged out of the river was all hers.
"Holly was single this summer and able to devote all her energy toward herself," Mike Fitz, a former park ranger at Katmai National Park and currently a resident naturalist for explore.org, noted online.
"She could be an expectant mother though," Fitz said. "If so, after she gives birth in the den her pudgy rolls will be converted to nutritious and fatty milk for tiny cubs."
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Holly, like her ursine cohort along the salmon-clogged Brooks River in Katmai National Park, will soon hibernate. It's a smart way to avoid extreme famine during the unrelenting Alaskan winter.
If you're a bear who lacks the fat reserves to burn through some six months of winter, you'll likely die.
"When it comes to bears it is survival of the fattest," said Andrew Derocher, a polar bear biologist at the University of Alberta.
"When it comes to bears it is survival of the fattest."
Nearly all the bears that "competed" in the 2019 fat bear week will probably survive the winter and return to the area in 2020. They appear regularly, year after year, on the explore.org live-streamed bear cams.
It's a ruthless, wild, unpredictable world for Holly. But she's a bear that knows how to endure in one of the wildest regions left on Earth.
Hats off to you, Holly, the fattest of the fattest bears.
Topics Animals
