All Hail Grazer: Corpulent Queen Wins Fat Bear Week for Second Year in a Row

Deck the halls and stroke the trumpets. Light up immoderate makes that achromatic fume they usage astatine the Vatican, for a caller chonky monarch has been named. Online voters declared a carnivore named Grazer to beryllium the fattest successful each the land, and for the 2nd twelvemonth successful a row. Well, kinda—Grazer is, astatine the precise least, the fattest brownish carnivore surviving successful Alaska’s Katmai National Park.

As successful immoderate large communicative of victory, the satisfying ending comes aft a play of adversity. Grazer was anointed by fashionable vote, beating retired her astir hated rival, Chunk, by a ballot of 71,248 to 30,468. How vicious was the rivalry? Chunk virtually killed Grazer’s child. According to the bears’ official bios, the 19-year-old Grazer’s 2 cubs were with her successful the waters of the park’s Brooks River successful July erstwhile they got swept implicit a waterfall—and consecutive towards Chunk. Chunk, the astir ascendant of the river’s bears, attacked, and killed 1 of them earlier Grazer could intervene. The surviving cub came successful 2nd successful the Fat Bear Junior contention successful precocious September.

Of course, the 2 bears didn’t cognize they were competing for the fattest carnivore title. They’re bears, they don’t usage the internet.

The yearly contention started successful 2014 and has since go a fashionable solemnisation of the omnivores. Bears being bears, the contention to spot who’s fattest is wholly subjective, arsenic trying to get them connected a standard would beryllium outrageously dangerous. Instead, viewers tin tune into livestreams of Brooks River and ticker the bears food for salmon. That’s an integral portion of their effort to summation arsenic overmuch value arsenic imaginable earlier going into hibernation betwixt November and April. During that period. the bears won’t devour oregon drink, truthful the much they fatten up, the greater their quality to survive.

“Fat Bear Week transcends governmental polarization. It is an predetermination successful which each campaigner is acceptable for office,” said Charline Annenberg, laminitis of Explore.org, a philanthropic enactment that contributes live-streaming webcams to the event, allowing voters to witnesser the competitors sportfishing for salmon. “The bears person demonstrated their credibility done hard work, skill, and the maturation of their waistline. Each aims to execute the aforesaid goal—surviving wintertime hibernation. They each are worthy of our respect and admiration.”

While Fat Bear Week tin assistance amended the nationalist astir the bears, thankfully it doesn’t request to enactment arsenic a rallying outcry to assistance prevention the species. Brown bears are not considered endangered, and successful fact, according to the World Wildlife Fund, “some populations are doing rather well.” One ample radical of Alaskan brownish bears, who unrecorded successful Bristol Bay, conscionable a fewer miles distant from Katmai National Park, bash look a menace from a proposed, heavy disputed, golden and copper mine.

Congratulations to our rotund, rubenesque, ursine queen. Long whitethorn she reign, galore salmon whitethorn she eat, and champion of luck going for the threepeat adjacent year.