Alaska brown bear Backpack wins Fat Bear Week…
After a week of fierce competitors, Backpack emerged victorious as Fat Bear Week champion, the heftiest bear of Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve.
The nonprofit operating the longstanding contest announced that the bear, identified for his pacifist nature, was the winner Tuesday with more than 100,000 votes, giving him a close win over Bear 910 with just over 50% of the ballot.
The contest, which is in its twelfth 12 months, celebrates the resilience of the two,200 brown bears that live in the protect on the Alaska Peninsula, which extends from the state’s southwest nook toward the Aleutian Islands.
Alaskan brown bear “Backpack,” wading in the water on Sept. 8, 2026, was topped the winner of Alaska’s Fat Bear Week. explore.org via AP
Fat Bear Week was began in 2014 as an interactive method to inform the public about brown bears, the coastal cousins of grizzlies.
Last 12 months’s winner, Chunk — identified formally as Bear 32 — clinched his victory at an estimated 1,200 kilos.
He was handily defeated in the first spherical of competitors this 12 months by Bucky, who went on to lose a faceoff against Backpack, identified formally as Bear 89.
The event this 12 months featured 16 bears vying for the heavyweight title in a single-elimination, bracket-style match.
All voting is finished online at www.fatbearweek.org, and the winner was declared Tuesday night after the ultimate ballot closed.
Bear 284 and two spring cubs, entrants in the Fat Bear Week contest, are pictured on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026, at Katmai National Park & Preserve in Alaska. C Loberg/NPS / SWNS
The public might watch the bears on explore.org’s livestream cameras before deciding on their favourite.
“Fat bears are successful bears,” the nonprofit says on its web site. This group gorges itself on the ample salmon that return to the Brooks River beginning in late June. It’s there that they will stuff themselves to accumulate the fats reserves they are going to need to survive the winter. To be featured in the competition, the bears must frequent the realm around the river.
Backpack is the son of former Fat Bear Week champion Holly, who launched him to the Brooks River when he was a first-year cub in 2006.
His identify was impressed by his behavior of climbing onto his mom’s back when they swam the river.
Bear 151 Walker, an entrant in the Fat Bear Week contest, is pictured on Thursday, September 24, 2026. C Loberg/NPS / SWNS
This 12 months’s followers cheered on Backpack in the competition’s Instagram feedback, noting his lineage and fame as a light giant.
“Unlike many large adult male bears, Backpack hasn’t shown much aggression toward his competitors,” his contestant profile reads.
Backpack makes use of his “quiet strength” moderately than brawling and is often seen in wildlife cameras sitting on a rock downstream, showing to take in the surroundings around him.
He defeated Bear 910, who is also the daughter of a former champion: 409 Beadnose.
Adult male brown bears usually weigh 600 to 900 kilos in midsummer.
By the time they’re prepared to hibernate after feasting on migrating and spawning salmon, large males can weigh nicely over 1,000 kilos.
Females are about one-third smaller.
The bears could each eat as many as 30 fish a day this time of 12 months, working onerous to eat a 12 months’s value of food in about six months.
Bear 151 Walker is pictured in its “skinny” state as an entrant in the Fat Bear Week contest at Katmai National Park & Preserve in Alaska on Sept. 24, 2026. T Hunt/NPS / SWNS
A bear snacks down on a fish during Alaska Fat Bear Week. Katmai Conservancy via AP
During winter hibernation, the bears don’t eat or drink and can lose one-third of their physique weight.
Fat Bear Week’s contestants also included 5 bear households, in recognition of the document high quantity of households and cubs at the river this summer season.
A mom must feed and defend her cubs while also eating enough calories to maintain herself through hibernation. Cubs often face the risk of assault by other bears due to territorialism or food shortage.
Bear 132 and her three spring cubs superior to the semifinals, but misplaced out to Bear 910.
Bear 132 has develop into one of the most important and most skilled mom bears at Brooks River, according to her contestant profile.
In mid-July, one of her cubs turned separated from the household for a number of days, wandering the river hall alone. They have been reunited a few days later.
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