LISTEN: Katmai’s bears are particularly plump, just in time for Fat Bear Week

Bear 435 Holly, “Michelin Man”. (Naomi Boak/Katmai National Park and Preserve)

Voting on the immense girth of various brown bears at Katmai National Park is underway in the park’s annual Fat Bear Week competition.

Many of the bears are well known to those watching Katmai’s Brooks Falls bear cam online (Think salmon leaping into a bear’s mouth… you get the picture). And for the past six years, fans have made a competition out of the “plumpest of plump” bears by putting them into March Madness-style brackets and voting to find a winner.

As Katmai park rangers like Naomi Boak will tell you, this time of year, a fat bear is a healthy bear.

LISTEN HERE:

a portrait of a man outside

Casey Grove is host of Alaska News Nightly, a general assignment reporter and an editor at Alaska Public Media. Reach him atcgrove@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Caseyhere

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