The ‘Biggest’ Vote of 2024 Isn’t the Presidential Election


This year’s 10th Fat Bear Week proved as buzzworthy as ever.

The glorious season of rotund rumps and lip-smacking giants—better known as Fat Bear Week—has come to a close. This annual March Madness-style competition celebrates the bulkiest brown bears of Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve. This year’s event, hosted by Katmai National Park, Katmai Conservancy, and nature-livestreaming platform Explore.org, saw a mother bear, 128 ‘Grazer’, crowned victor on Oct. 8th.

Yes, Grazer deserves her moment in the spotlight, but Fat Bear Week is about more than one beefy winner. The event, now concluding its 10th year, helps conserve this threatened Alaskan ecosystem, which supports the extreme dietary needs of one of North America’s largest bear species. The Katmai bruins consume up to 100,000 daily calories, the equivalent of around 17 whole Chicago deep-dish pizzas, every day. Adults can weigh up to 1,000 pounds by fall.

The entire plumping process, from the exorbitant heft to the availability of adequate food, ensures the bears survive winter hibernation. It’s a marvel of Mother Nature, says Explore.org resident naturalist Mike Fitz, a former national park ranger who co-led the first fat bear bonanza in 2014. “Fat Bear Week is an opportunity to consider the dramatic annual changes experienced by Katmai National Park’s brown bears, understand the importance of fat to their survival, and raise awareness for the national park and the remarkably healthy Bristol Bay ecosystem.”

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The bay also supports Earth’s last great salmon run—a yearly spectacle that sees tens of millions of fish swimming upstream from Bristol Bay and through waterways like Katmai National Park’s Brooks River to spawn. Yet proposed mines in the Bristol Bay watershed, encompassing over 500,000 square miles of streams and rivers, put this critical food source at risk.

While Fat Bear Week can’t solve the problem alone, it does make a difference—particularly given its popularity, as this year alone saw over one million votes. Increased awareness of south-central Alaska’s fuzzy giants and responsible tourism to see them can help fend off destructive mining operations.

Fat Bear Week is an annual March Madness-style competition celebrating the bulkiest brown bears of Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve Katmai National Park and Preserve[PDM 1.0]/Flickr

Fat Bear Week’s Threatened Backdrop

Katmai National Park protects 4.2 million acres of tundra, coastal forests, lakes, rivers, and an estimated 2,200 brown bears. Each summer, Brooks River welcomes a particularly prolific sockeye salmon run. It sparks one of the planet’s greatest brown-bear gatherings, especially around Brooks Falls, where the hungry bruins wait to snag the unsuspecting fish as they leap up the six-foot waterfall on their spawning journeys.

Just north of Katmai is another wildlife haven in the Bristol Bay watershed, the 4-million-acre Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, home to its own massive brown bear population. The resident bears gorge on high-protein sedge, as well as clams, berries, and salmon in the late summer.

According to Mike Hillman, a wildlife photographer and expedition leader for Natural Habitat Adventures’ Alaska Bear Camp, a safari outpost on a private homestead within steps of Lake Clark, this Katmai-Lake Clark region, which also includes McNeil River State Game Sanctuary, boasts some of the country’s most impressive bear populations. “That corridor is, realistically, the best place in North America to photograph brown bears, and bears in general,” he says.

Yet threats abound here, starting with a decades-long fight against the proposed Pebble Mine, an enormous open-pit mine that would be carved to extract gold and copper. The location: smack-dab between Katmai and Lake Clark, near Iliamna Lake, a critical salmon spawning ground. According to the World Wildlife Fund, Pebble Mine would destroy 21 miles of salmon streams and 3,000 wetland acres that Alaska Natives and bears have relied on for millennia.

In 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency officially vetoed the project, citing the Clean Water Act. Yet “this is what we call a zombie project,” says Hillman. “It’s very difficult to kill, and it revives itself every so often.” In fact, earlier this year, the project developers sued the EPA to overturn the ruling.

Adding to the concerns is another newly proposed mine on a private backcountry swath of Lake Clark National Park, the Johnson Tract Mine. The location lies mere miles from the main national park bear-viewing sites, where the animals gather to feast, mate, and den. The project and its likely future development “will disturb wildlife, destroy wetlands, impact a thriving recreation-based economy, and permanently alter rural lifestyles dependent on traditional food resources,” according to a letter from the Alaska Wildlife Alliance.

Peak salmon-run month, July, sees roughly 40% of all park visitation  EWY Media/Shutterstock

Responsible Bear-Watching in Alaska

While a decision on the Johnson Tract Mine has yet to been announced, the economic benefits of tourism could play a key role in protecting the local ecosystems against these threats, as well as the inevitable new mining proposals to come. A study released by the University of Alaska Fairbanks found that, in 2017 alone, bear tourism generated $34.5 million and 680 jobs in south-central Alaska. It also helps future-proof the region’s national parks, like Katmai and Lake Clark.

“National parks in the U.S. exist only because they are supported by the public,” says Fitz, noting that the government could technically eliminate the parks at any time. “But Congress doesn’t consider that because people love parks and the wildlife in them. When people visit parks, the experience helps build a sense of place that we can utilize to ensure that parks are further protected.”

Wildlife enthusiasts can help safeguard the parks, bears, and south-central Alaska economy with their travels, whether it’s hiring a local guide or staying one or several nights. Viewing platforms overlooking Brooks Falls, the site of the fishing bears, are Katmai’s most famed attraction. Some travelers visit Brooks Camp for the day via a Cessna flight and tour from Homer or Anchorage or by water taxi from King Salmon. A lucky few nab overnight spots at falls-adjacent Brooks Lodge, which requires a competitive lottery, or the Brooks Camp campground (June to mid-September); it often books out well in advance, too.

While Katmai’s salmon run is unmatched, it does draw major crowds, especially around Brooks Camp. “Visitation at Brooks River has more than doubled since 2009, yet ranger staffing levels remain nearly stagnant over the same time period,” says Fitz.

According to NPS data, the peak salmon-run month, July, sees roughly 40% of all park visitation, according to NPS data. To potentially avoid the crowds and minimize concentrated tourism pressures, consider visiting during early to mid-September. The salmon run often picks up around this time again, yet only a fraction of travelers come to see it. (Most visitor services close here in mid-September.) This timing comes with another Alaska perk: the potential for northern lights.

The Otis Fund, named for the tournament’s first winner in 2014, supports Katmai conservation projects  Danita Delimont/Shutterstock

Alternatively, head to equally important and impressive bear-safari escape, Lake Clark National Park, reached by a tiny fixed-wing plane from Homer or Anchorage. Travelers short on time can visit by day for several action-packed hours of bear watching bookended by an eye-popping flight over saw-toothed peaks and snowy volcanoes.

For intimate, around-the-clock hours with the giants, Natural Habitat Adventures, World Wildlife Fund’s travel partner, hosts up to 14 guests at Alaska Bear Camp. Travelers spend three nights in cozy, electric-fence-protected glamping tents, which overlook clamming bears on the mountain-flanked Chinitna Bay shores. Just behind the camp is a private observation deck perched above a sprawling sedge meadow, where bears, and frequently mothers and cubs, come to graze. Guests can also visit the public national park viewing sites for diverse vantage points; expert naturalists guide all excursions for safety and enrichment.

Given the remoteness, a trip to south-central Alaska’s bear country isn’t cheap, but wildlife enthusiasts can still support the mammals sans jet-setting. Each Fat Bear Week, event organizers host the Otis Fund, named for the tournament’s first winner in 2014 (Otis sadly passed away this year). It funds critical Katmai projects, including equipment purchases for backcountry work, research projects, and consultation and coordination with Alaska Native communities. The 2024 Otis Fund fundraiser remains open until Oct. 13.

And livestreams, which get particularly popular around Fat Bear Week, help the public fall in love with the animals from home. “Webcams are a different type of experience,” says Fitz. “But watching bears through webcams creates opportunities to share Katmai with the world and create passionate, life-long stewards.”



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