(CNN) — Spring is for skinny bears and March Insanity basketball.
Fall, nevertheless, is for fats bears — and for Katmai Nationwide Park & Protect’s annual Fats Bear Week and its accompanying event of crowning a chubby champion for 2022.
And in contrast to that bracket-busting basketball tourney, you’ll be able to really take part in and sway this contest. On-line voting by the general public began Wednesday.
The competition is “a approach to have fun the resilience, adaptability and power of Katmai’s brown bears,” the park says on its web site.
The 12 heavyweights have been in coaching for the large occasion since rising from hibernation, foraging on all of the salmon and different meals nature offers at this park in coastal southwest Alaska.
Katmai goes all out with the promotion on social media corresponding to Twitter with brackets and the works.
As an example, 32 Chunk is “persistently one of many largest and most dominant bears on the falls. In earlier years, he weighed an estimated 1,200 lbs in fall. He often occupies the perfect fishing spots on the river and has entry to the perfect mating alternatives.”
And in contrast to March Insanity with separate males’s and ladies’s groups, feminine bears get in on the motion in the identical contest.
Meet contestant 128 Grazer. Her picture was taken on September 10, 2022.
Courtesy L. Regulation/Katmai Nationwide Park
The park says “128 Grazer is likely one of the bigger and extra dominant females to fish [Brooks Falls]. She may be an particularly defensive and assertive bear when she has cubs, or when defending a primary fishing location.”
At Katmai, the Brooks River offers these brown bears with a bounty.
“Maybe no different river on Earth affords bears the possibility to feed on salmon for therefore lengthy,” the voting website explains.
480 Otis had placed on the kilos by September 14, 2022.
Courtesy L. Regulation/Katmai Nationwide Park
The competition is enjoyable approach to spotlight the rhythm of life for bears as they put together for his or her winter hibernation.
In that point, “bears don’t eat or drink and may lose one-third of their physique weight,” the web site says. “Their winter survival is determined by accumulating ample fats reserves earlier than getting into the den.”
