Katmai National Park’s annual Fat Bear Week is underway again: A time when the general public watches livestreams of feeding and fighting brown bears at Brooks Falls in southwest Alaska. Though it’s a shameless publicity stunt (which includes bracket-style voting for bears, many of which have names), it’s an effective one. Fat Bear Week is ultimately educating the public about brown bears. This time of year, these apex predators are packing on the pounds by feasting on calorie-rich sockeye salmon at Brooks Falls. All that fat is crucial for helping bears survive the harsh Alaskan winter. Bears do not truly hibernate, but instead enervate, or enter a state of torpor, in their dens. A bear’s metabolic rate drops while they’re in the den, and the bears survive off their fat stores.
Related: Brown Bear Kills a Sow in NPS Livestream, Reminding Shocked Viewers that Alaska’s Bears Are Indeed Wild
A bear can lose up to one-third of its body weight in the den, which is why their fat stores are crucial. According to the NPS, “in the Brooks River area of Katmai National Park, bears gorge on summer’s bounty in their attempt to eat a winter’s worth of food in about six months. Large bears can gain a few hundred pounds in fat before they retire to their winter dens.”
Bears in the Katmai region typically enter dens in October — assuming, that is, they can fit.
The 2025 winner remains uncrowned, but you can watch live streams of the bears fishing at Brooks Falls below. You can also check out more stories about bears here:
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