National Park Service
The 2024 edition of the beloved annual tradition that is “Fat Bear Week” was marred by the death of a potential competitor who was killed by another before the contest was scheduled to kick off, and the eventual winner also got some revenge over a rival responsible for killing her cub earlier this year.
2024 marked the 11th installment of “Fat Bear Week,” the eagerly awaited showdown featuring brown bears at Katmai National Park in Alaska who make their way to Brooks River each year prior to the start of the winter to hunt the sockeye salmon that help them bulk up before entering hibernation.
The competition (a collaboration between the National Park Service and Explore.org) was initially organized in 2014 in the hopes of aiding conservation efforts and educating the public, and it quickly took the internet by storm.
“Fat Bear Week” is conducted with the help of the cameras at Brooks River that provide a real-time look at the massive beasts roaming Katmai, which have captured a number of incidents highlighting the brutal reality of nature and the ferocity of the bears who aren’t shy about targeting fellow members of their own species in an attempt to survive.
That included an incident that unfolded over the summer involving the cub of 2023 Fat Bear Week Champion Grazer, which was killed by another bear known as “Chunk” after it fell over a waterfall (that unfolded a few months before the bear-on-bear murder that resulted in the start of this year’s contest being temporarily postponed).
As the Associated Press notes, we were subsequently treated to a very interesting storyline in the 2024 Fat Bear Week Final, as Grazer and Chunk ended up going head-to-head in the championship showdown after beating out the rest of the competition on each side of the bracket that started with 12 bears.
When everything was said and done, Grazer defended her crown and repeated as champion by beating Chunk by more than 40,000 votes in what could best be described as a bittersweet victory.
The win obviously doesn’t serve as much consolation for Grazer when you consider she’s a bear that’s entirely unaware of the existence of the contest she won (as well as the concept of consolation), but you still love to see it.