Tag: Katmai

‘Dominant’ brown bears brawl over fishing rights at Brooks Falls

Brown bears Walker and Bear 856 were caught on video brawling for fishing rights near Brooks Falls in Alaska’s Katmai National Park.

Brown bears in Alaska’s Katmai National Park have arrived on the Brooks River and early season competition for prime feeding areas can be contentious.

The accompanying footage shows adult males Walker and Bear 856 sparring briefly before pausing in a skirmish seemingly won by the larger Bear 856.

Explore.org, which maintains cameras on the Brooks River, stated Sunday via Twitter:

“Brooks Falls heated up last night as two dominant forces went head to head. No serious injuries reported.”

Brown bears at Brooks Falls are famous because of live-cam feeds that allow followers to observe the animals as they fish for sockeye salmon and pack thousands of calories per day.

(Bears that weigh between 700 and 900 pounds in mid-summer can weigh more than 1,200 pounds by early fall.)

Fat Bear Week, held in October, allows fans to vote for their favorite bears in a bracket-style competition. Last year’s winner was Bear 747, a.k.a. Bear Force One, who weighed an estimated 1,400 pounds.

As for Walker, Explore states on its website:

“Walker remained a tolerant and playful bear during his young adult years. He allowed other bears to approach him, and he sought sparring partners for prolonged play fights. However, his priorities have changed as he matured into a fully grown adult.

“With his large body size and assertive disposition, Walker is one the river’s most dominant bears.”

Some background on Bear 856:

“Bear 856 was classified as a young adult in 2006. At the time he had a relatively small body compared to older adults. By his tenth or eleventh year of life, however, he became one of the biggest bears at the river with an assertive disposition equal to his size.”

Fat Bear Week is billed as “a celebration of success” for all of the region’s bears after another bountiful feeding season.

Watch: Bear cubs mesmerized as giant moose charges through river

For three bear cubs on Alaska’s Brooks River, the sight of a giant moose bounding past them might still be etched upon their minds.

For three bear cubs on Alaska’s Brooks River, the sight of a giant moose bounding past might still be etched upon their minds.

The accompanying footage, captured over the weekend via bear cam, shows the cub triplets seemingly mesmerized – possibly terrified – by a bull moose galloping through water just yards away.

Momma bear does not appear in the footage, but she’s probably nearby. Adult brown bears, fishing for salmon elsewhere on the river, are visible in the background.

It’s unclear what prompted the moose to run through the river.

Explore.org, which maintains the bear cams in conjunction with the National Park Service, asked avid bear-cam followers if the cubs might belong to an adult brown bear cataloged as Bear 94.

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Brown bears on the Brooks River, in Katmai National Park, are internationally famous thanks to the bear cams and the annual bracket-style competition known as Fat Bear Week.

Fat Bear Week, during which fans vote for their favorite and fattest bears, is held every fall as a tribute to bears’ success in packing calories in advance of hibernation. (A single salmon may contain 4,000 calories and some bears consume dozens of salmon per day.)

This year’s competition is Oct. 5-11 and an older bear nicknamed Otis is the defending champion. Voting for the Fat Bear Junior Finals ended last week, with Bear 94’s triplets losing out to the yearling cub of Bear 909.

Watch: Huge bear lands perfect bellyflop at waterfall

After plotting its move for several seconds, a brown bear on Alaska’s Brooks River leaped from the top of a waterfall and landed a perfect bellyflop.

After plotting its move for several seconds, a brown bear on Alaska’s Brooks River leaped from the top of a waterfall and performed a masterful bellyflop.

The accompanying footage, shared by the Department of the Interior, was captured recently by the popular Explore.org live bear camera at Brooks Falls.

“BearCam is back for the season,” the Department of Interior boasted via Instagram. “Watch Alaska brown bears fish (and jump) for salmon live at Katmai National Park. Every year, they congregate to feast on sockeye salmon in the Brooks River.”

The bears, which recently emerged from hibernation, are internationally famous, in large part because the BearCam allows followers to view their fishing prowess and amusing antics.

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But the bears are also renowned because of Fat Bear Week, a fan-driven March Madness-style competition during the fall, which serves as “an annual celebration of [feeding] success.”

Last year’s winner was an older bear named Otis, a four-time Fat Bear Week champion.

National park quiz: How many bears can you spot in the photo?

Katmai National Park and Preserve this week quizzed followers by posting an image and asking how many bears are visible on the landscape.

Katmai National Park and Preserve this week quizzed followers by posting the accompanying images and asking how many bears are visible on the landscape. (A link to the answer is provided at the bottom of this post.)

The Facebook post explained that rangers each August conduct surveys around Moraine and Funnel Creeks at regular intervals, as part of their monitoring of salmon, people, planes in the sky, and bear activity.

Blow up image and try to guess the number of visible bears

With each bear sighting biologists try to determine age, sex, and the type of behavior.

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Of the accompanying images, captured during a survey, the Alaska wilderness park requested: “Test your skills and see if you can find all of the bears.”

Viewers might want to blow up the image because the quiz is difficult. Viewers can CLICK ON THIS LINK to discover the answer, as provided by the park. (Best to look at both images in the “answer” post.)

Katmai National Park and Preserve is in southwest Alaska, on the Alaska Peninsula, and encompasses more than 4 million acres. The park is famous for bear viewing at Brooks Camp, where the bruins gorge on salmon during the summer.

Sigh of relief as beloved brown bear Otis is alive and well

A Tuesday night sighting of Bear 480 Otis, one of the oldest (and fattest) brown bears residing in Alaska’s Katmai National Park & Preserve, was a moment worthy of celebration.

A Tuesday night sighting of Bear 480 Otis, one of the oldest and most popular brown bears in Alaska’s Katmai National Park & Preserve, was a moment worthy of celebration.

“Otis is indeed in the house,” the park announced Wednesday on Facebook. “480 Otis is one of our oldest and probably most beloved bear. He has been missing in action. Last year he arrived at the Brooks River on June 23rd. The latest he has ever arrived is July 17th. We were concerned.”

The male brown bear, first identified in 2001 as a subadult or young adult, is believed to be 25 or 26 years old.

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Bear 480 Otis is a fixture at Brooks Falls and an occasional star on the park’s live bear cam. He was the inspiration for the 2008 Katmai National Park booster pin. Footage of Otis appears in the 2014 Disneynature Movie, “Bears.”

Otis is a past winner of the park’s annual Fat Bear Week competition, which celebrates “all the hard work that these bears do to survive and thrive and get through six months of starvation,” Naomi Boak, a park media ranger, told the Washington Post.

But as Bear 480 Otis ages, park employees and the bruin’s many fans become worried when he does not arrive at the river in the same timely manner as younger bears.

On Wednesday a bear-cam viewer who had not heard the good news commented, “Otis is a master fisher bear! The younger bears should watch and learn. Come back soon Otis, miss you already.”

The park concluded its Facebook announcement by stating, “Brown bears lead challenging lives and 26 is quite an achievement, especially for a male bear. So celebrate the return of Bear 480 Otis with us!”

–Image courtesy of NPS Photo/N. Boak