For one rabid nook of the web, October is Octobear. On October fifth, Katmai National Park & Preserve in southern Alaska kicked off Fat Bear Week, when the park’s brown bears are pitted in opposition to one another in a bracket problem very like school basketball’s March Madness match. Fans use earlier than and after images to vote for the bear they suppose has gained probably the most weight all through the summer season to organize for hibernation. But what started as a distinct segment contest for conservationists has morphed into a worldwide marketing campaign the place superfans stump for his or her favorite chunkster to be topped the fattest of all of them.
Fat Bear Week started in 2014 as Fat Bear Tuesday. Mike Fitz, a former park ranger at Katmai, observed that stay webcams displaying the bears generated a variety of on-line feedback. He and the opposite rangers let folks vote for his or her favorite fats bear on Facebook. The one-day occasion garnered simply 1,700 votes in 2014. Last yr’s week-long contest elicited almost 800,000. Like its basketball progenitor, followers be a part of workplace bracket swimming pools and collect to look at the stay bear cams arrange across the park. Some go additional. Jean Gross is internet hosting a bear-themed potluck the place she lives in Northern Michigan. Guests should carry meals that attraction to each bears and people, equivalent to salmon patties and honey butter. This yr Ms Gross says she is rooting for Holly, an older feminine, as a result of “she is a nice little fat girl and so am I”.
The contest serves two functions apart from gushing over the rotund predators. America’s nationwide parks are sometimes in distant, undeveloped areas. They could be tough and dear to journey to. Fat Bear Week brings Alaska’s pristine wilderness to followers’ pc screens. “The webcams help to democratise the experience,” says Mr Fitz, now a naturalist for discover.org, which operates the bear cams. “It’s not limited to the fortunate few who can go to the river anymore”.
Second, Fat Bear Week heaps consideration upon the bears, and the ecosystems they inhabit. The 2,200 bears of Katmai are so husky as a result of they feed from one of many healthiest salmon runs on the planet, says Sara Wolman, a former park ranger. Salmon within the Pacific Northwest have suffered as a result of overfishing, dam development and warming rivers as a result of local weather change. Brooks River, the place Katmai’s bears wish to fish, has to date dodged these threats.
Creators and followers of Fat Bear Week argue the competition has gone viral as a result of it’s a conservation success story that for one week helps dispel emotions of doom about habitat loss and local weather change. “Maybe things aren’t super great all the time in the world”, says Felicia Jimenez, a present Katmai ranger, “but there’s some really fat bears in Alaska.” ■