From a dozen to only one: Scarred “32 Chunk” was topped the fats bear champion of Alaska’s Brooks River, organizers introduced Tuesday.
The annual competitors drew in tens of 1000’s of votes and lasted per week.
Chunk beat out rival bear “856” within the ultimate polling, 96,350 votes to 63,725, the group that runs the livestream cameras on the Katmai Nationwide Park and Protect stated.
“Chunk the Hunk. The Chunkster. 32 Chunk,” the group, Discover, posted on X. “All hail the brand new king of Brooks River.”
Fats Bear Week, a contest that started in 2014, opened for voting on Sept. 23 with 12 contenders.
The bears have been attempting to fatten up by gorging on salmon — together with at occasions by solely consuming the pores and skin, brains and eggs to deal with essentially the most energy — earlier than hibernating for the winter.
Voters had been instructed to decide on “the bear you imagine finest exemplifies fatness and success in brown bears.”
Chunk is a male bear described as “very giant” and weighing round 1,200 kilos. He has a particular scar and a damaged jaw, which is therapeutic however by no means anticipated to return to regular, based on Discover’s web site.
“The timing of the harm through the brown bear mating season and the character of it strongly counsel that Chunk was injured in a battle with one other bear,” the group stated.
Katmai Nationwide Park and Protect, on the Alaska Peninsula southwest of Anchorage, is understood for its brown bears. The Brooks Camp on the mouth of the Brooks River attracts guests yearly to look at the massive animals.
Salmon return upstream on the Brooks all through the summer season to spawn, and the bears are there to fulfill them with open jaws. Then, in September, the fish are weakened and dying and bears return to once more chow down, the park says on its web site.
Katmai’s bears normally go to their dens to hibernate in October and November, based on the park.
