May 22, 2024 • 7 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Lian Law is a ranger at Brooks Camp in Katmai National Park and Preserve, and she’s here to share about Fat Bear Week, the March-Madness style bracket where bears compete to be the “Fat Bear Champion.”
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
They show where America is the star and the American people.
And today we're going to hear from Leon law in Alaska.
Leon is a ranger at Brooks Camp in Katmai National
Park and Preserve, and she's here to share a story
about Fat Bear Week, the March Madness style bracket where
(00:34):
bears compete to be the fat Bear Champion.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
There's not many places that you can work and say sorry,
I'm late there was a bear in my way, and
that be a completely valid excuse. But that does happen
at Brooks Camp to rangers as well as visitors. Catmi
National Park and Preserve is comprised of just over four
(01:05):
million acres or so. It's located in southwest Alaska, and
one of the things that we are perhaps best known
for is our high concentration of brown bears. Bears are
not true hibernators. They actually go through a state called torpor,
but here in bears enter the den anywhere from late
(01:27):
October to early December and they exit in April or May.
But once they enter the den, they don't eat or
drink anything, but rely solely off their fat reserves, so
essentially they need to eat an entire year's worth of
food in six months or less. During this time in
(01:49):
the den, they will lose perhaps about a third of
their body weight, and even when they exit the den
in spring, it's still a lean time for them, so
bears will continue to lose weight. So it just speaks
to the importance of getting fat essentially during the waking hours.
(02:10):
So Fat Bear Week began in twenty fourteen and it
started simply as fat Bear Tuesday, a one day competition
held on our social media and the purpose was to
highlight the hard work of the bears and our healthy
ecosystem here at CATMI. It became so successful that it
has now expanded into Fat Bear Week. So for bears here,
(02:36):
fat equals survival and success. A fat bear is a
healthy bear. So Fat Bear Week is cat mii's annual
celebration of success and survival. So it is essentially a competition.
It is a single elimination bracket where bears face off
head to head in matchups and voters get to choose
(02:58):
the ultimate winner. The main bracket consists of twelve different
bears and voters will choose who advances to the next
round and ultimately crown the fat bear champion. Unfortunately, our
bears aren't really the kind who would cooperate if we
(03:18):
tried to put them on the scale, So what we
can do is we can only estimate their weight. So
a couple of years ago we did experiment using light
oar scanning, which is typically used in civil engineering for
scanning buildings or similar things. It provides a measurement of
volume and through that we can kind of get an
(03:38):
estimate of weight. So most adult males weigh six hundred
to nine hundred pounds in midsummer, and by October November,
large adult males can weigh well over one thousand pounds,
so you'll see huge fluctuations. A good example, for instance,
is seven four seven, the champion of twenty twenty, and
(04:03):
we believe that he is our largest bear known to
use Brooks River. He was estimated to weigh fourteen hundred pounds,
so he is a big guy. One of these special
things about Katmi is we actually get to see the
same bears over and over, and sometimes not just throughout
the season, but over the course of several years, and
(04:26):
through that you come to know that each of these
bears are individuals, what type of fishing technique they like
to use, or where a bear prefers to fish for
eighty Otis was last year's fat Bear Champion, and actually
that was his fourth title claim. He is one of
our older bears here at Brooks and he employs a
(04:50):
sit and wait kind of method, a method of patience
of letting the fish come to him. And over the
course we get to see bears, not just him, but
other bears at well, taken fish after fish. Sometimes we've
seen bears eat upwards of forty fish in a day.
One eight grazer. She is really known for being assertive
(05:15):
and we will often see her fishing in prime spots
because of her assertiveness. So nine oh nine was a
first time mom and she had a spring cub, so
first year in their life. Cub and nine to nine
had caught a fish and had brought it over the
bank to eat, and we saw this little spring cub
charge another bear who had gotten too close and was
(05:37):
begging for fish. So we get to witness really incredible interactions.
And sometimes food is so plentiful right that bears are
released from some of that competition for resources. So we
also get to see bears play with bears occasionally, so
what you get to witness that Katmaia is pretty remarkable.
(06:00):
We have seen so much positive response to Fat Bear Week.
We see people incorporating it into classrooms. We see people
campaigning for their favorite bear. People have bracket parties at work,
and during Fat Bear Week we also have many live
broadcasts on the bear camps and people will tune into
that and have live watch parties as well, so we
(06:22):
see how widespread it really has become. Hearing from people
all over the world as they participate in voting, and
last year we had nearly eight hundred thousand votes cast.
So during Fat Bear Week we are really holding up
Catmi and specifically Brooks Camp in particular on a pedestal
that truly exemplifies the richness of Catmaia National Park and
(06:46):
the Bristol Bay area of Alaska. Fat Bear Week is
a celebration of success.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
And a terrific job on the production by Madison and
his special thanks to leon Law and her work at
Catmai National Park and preserve this great country. The federal
government owns thirty percent or more of all the lands
in this great country. The states own another ten percent,
but forty percent of our country has been preserved by
the Congress or state legislatures, and thank goodness for that.
(07:18):
We love celebrating the stories of our wildlife in this country.
No better story than how Fatbear Tuesday became Fatbear Week
in Alaska. Here on our American Stories. Here at our
American Stories, we bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith,
and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that
(07:39):
need to be told. But we can't do it without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love our stories in America
like we do, please go to our American Stories dot
com and click the donate button. Give a little, give
a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot Com.
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
They show where America is the star and the American people.
And today we're going to hear from Leon law in Alaska.
Leon is a ranger at Brooks Camp in Katmai National
Park and Preserve, and she's here to share a story
about Fat Bear Week, the March Madness style bracket where
(00:34):
bears compete to be the fat Bear Champion.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
There's not many places that you can work and say sorry,
I'm late there was a bear in my way, and
that be a completely valid excuse. But that does happen
at Brooks Camp to rangers as well as visitors. Catmi
National Park and Preserve is comprised of just over four
(01:05):
million acres or so. It's located in southwest Alaska, and
one of the things that we are perhaps best known
for is our high concentration of brown bears. Bears are
not true hibernators. They actually go through a state called torpor,
but here in bears enter the den anywhere from late
(01:27):
October to early December and they exit in April or May.
But once they enter the den, they don't eat or
drink anything, but rely solely off their fat reserves, so
essentially they need to eat an entire year's worth of
food in six months or less. During this time in
(01:49):
the den, they will lose perhaps about a third of
their body weight, and even when they exit the den
in spring, it's still a lean time for them, so
bears will continue to lose weight. So it just speaks
to the importance of getting fat essentially during the waking hours.
(02:10):
So Fat Bear Week began in twenty fourteen and it
started simply as fat Bear Tuesday, a one day competition
held on our social media and the purpose was to
highlight the hard work of the bears and our healthy
ecosystem here at CATMI. It became so successful that it
has now expanded into Fat Bear Week. So for bears here,
(02:36):
fat equals survival and success. A fat bear is a
healthy bear. So Fat Bear Week is cat mii's annual
celebration of success and survival. So it is essentially a competition.
It is a single elimination bracket where bears face off
head to head in matchups and voters get to choose
(02:58):
the ultimate winner. The main bracket consists of twelve different
bears and voters will choose who advances to the next
round and ultimately crown the fat bear champion. Unfortunately, our
bears aren't really the kind who would cooperate if we
(03:18):
tried to put them on the scale, So what we
can do is we can only estimate their weight. So
a couple of years ago we did experiment using light
oar scanning, which is typically used in civil engineering for
scanning buildings or similar things. It provides a measurement of
volume and through that we can kind of get an
(03:38):
estimate of weight. So most adult males weigh six hundred
to nine hundred pounds in midsummer, and by October November,
large adult males can weigh well over one thousand pounds,
so you'll see huge fluctuations. A good example, for instance,
is seven four seven, the champion of twenty twenty, and
(04:03):
we believe that he is our largest bear known to
use Brooks River. He was estimated to weigh fourteen hundred pounds,
so he is a big guy. One of these special
things about Katmi is we actually get to see the
same bears over and over, and sometimes not just throughout
the season, but over the course of several years, and
(04:26):
through that you come to know that each of these
bears are individuals, what type of fishing technique they like
to use, or where a bear prefers to fish for
eighty Otis was last year's fat Bear Champion, and actually
that was his fourth title claim. He is one of
our older bears here at Brooks and he employs a
(04:50):
sit and wait kind of method, a method of patience
of letting the fish come to him. And over the
course we get to see bears, not just him, but
other bears at well, taken fish after fish. Sometimes we've
seen bears eat upwards of forty fish in a day.
One eight grazer. She is really known for being assertive
(05:15):
and we will often see her fishing in prime spots
because of her assertiveness. So nine oh nine was a
first time mom and she had a spring cub, so
first year in their life. Cub and nine to nine
had caught a fish and had brought it over the
bank to eat, and we saw this little spring cub
charge another bear who had gotten too close and was
(05:37):
begging for fish. So we get to witness really incredible interactions.
And sometimes food is so plentiful right that bears are
released from some of that competition for resources. So we
also get to see bears play with bears occasionally, so
what you get to witness that Katmaia is pretty remarkable.
(06:00):
We have seen so much positive response to Fat Bear Week.
We see people incorporating it into classrooms. We see people
campaigning for their favorite bear. People have bracket parties at work,
and during Fat Bear Week we also have many live
broadcasts on the bear camps and people will tune into
that and have live watch parties as well, so we
(06:22):
see how widespread it really has become. Hearing from people
all over the world as they participate in voting, and
last year we had nearly eight hundred thousand votes cast.
So during Fat Bear Week we are really holding up
Catmi and specifically Brooks Camp in particular on a pedestal
that truly exemplifies the richness of Catmaia National Park and
(06:46):
the Bristol Bay area of Alaska. Fat Bear Week is
a celebration of success.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
And a terrific job on the production by Madison and
his special thanks to leon Law and her work at
Catmai National Park and preserve this great country. The federal
government owns thirty percent or more of all the lands
in this great country. The states own another ten percent,
but forty percent of our country has been preserved by
the Congress or state legislatures, and thank goodness for that.
(07:18):
We love celebrating the stories of our wildlife in this country.
No better story than how Fatbear Tuesday became Fatbear Week
in Alaska. Here on our American Stories. Here at our
American Stories, we bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith,
and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that
(07:39):
need to be told. But we can't do it without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love our stories in America
like we do, please go to our American Stories dot
com and click the donate button. Give a little, give
a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot Com.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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