When the thought of bears come to mind, people traditionally think of large animals with big paws, a love for fish, and the fact that the sleep through winter- but there’s more to them than that. Bears do something called hibernation, and most just think of hibernation as a simple sleep through the cold times, but a national park in Alaska is trying to change such a simple idea for such a complex concept. Although many are unaware of it, this vote-controlled competition based on Alaskan grizzly bears is helping to share the importance of bears getting fat for the winter.

 What Purpose Does Hibernation Serve for Grizzly Bears?

The term hibernation means “the condition or period of an animal or plants spending the winter in a dormant state”, but in the case of grizzlies what exactly does this mean? Well, according to an article by Andrew LaValle called It’s Jiggly Season: Fat Bear Week Begins October 3rd for the National Park Service, “large amounts of body fat are indicative of good health and strong chances of survival. The bears need stores of fat to help them survive hibernation, which can last for up to half of the year.” Plus, since the bears lose one-third of their body fat during their long winter's sleep, then eating such a hefty amount of food is a case of life or death, as stated by cbsnews in their article Fat Bear Week: Alaska brown bears "compete" for fat fame ahead of hibernation months. So since it is a great thing for the bears to eat so much, the Katmai National Park & Preserve in King Salmon, AK has decided to celebrate the amount of food that the bears consume by doing a March-Madness styled brackets to determine which bear is the fattest, by having people vote on each bear in every bracket up until they have a winner.

 How Does This Benefit the Park?

Over the past four years, the competition has gained more and more popularity as news channels start to report on it more than ever this year. One of the Rangers from Katmai in Kelly-Leigh Cooper’s article titled Why a US national park is holding a 'Fat Bear Week' contest for BBC explains that "People who have never been to the park and may never get to the park can watch the webcams so quasi-religiously that they get to know the bears really really well.” This generates a whole new audience of tourists that the park may have never had before, bringing in more money and popularity for the park. Additionally, the same Ranger states that “if people are interested in the bears, they tend to want to help protect them.” Therefore people will become more aware of the environments some bears are forced to live in due to being forced out of their habitat from deforestation. Such a competition helps to bring tourism and popularity to the park, in addition to educating the public on how the bears live.

Since the Alaskan National Park & Preserve called Katmai in King Salmon is raising awareness for the grizzly bears preparing for hibernation, it has helped to gain tourism and popularity for the park. This has lead to the Park’s vote-based competition to determine ‘which bear is the fattest’ to skyrocket to being a very interesting and popular topic that has been reported on by so many writers around the country.

Works Cited

News, CBS. “Fat Bear Week: Alaska Brown Bears ‘Compete’ for Fat Fame Ahead of Hibernation Months.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 9 Oct. 2018, 11:52.

Cooper, Kelly-Leigh. “Why a US National Park Is Holding a 'Fat Bear Week' Contest.” BBC News, BBC, 5 Oct. 2018.

LaValle, Andrew. “Fat Bear Week Begins October 3rd.” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1 Oct. 2018.