Chunk, a 1,200-pound bear with a broken jaw, wins Fat Bear Week contest

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Chunk, a towering brownish carnivore with a breached jaw, swept the contention Tuesday successful the fashionable Fat Bear Week contention — his archetypal triumph aft narrowly finishing successful 2nd spot 3 erstwhile years.

The yearly online contention allows viewers to travel 12 bears successful Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve connected unrecorded webcams and formed ballots successful a bracket-style, single-elimination tourney that lasts a week. Chunk — known officially arsenic Bear 32 — bushed retired Bear 856, who doesn't person a nickname, successful the last bracket, according to totals posted connected the organizers' website.

Chunk’s value was estimated astatine 1,200 pounds by contention organizers. While they bash not measurement idiosyncratic bears during the contention due to the fact that of information concerns, Chunk and others person had their density scanned to bolster value estimates successful the past utilizing laser exertion called LIDAR.

“Despite his breached jaw, helium remains 1 of the biggest, baddest bears astatine Brooks River,” said Mike Fitz, a naturalist for explore.org. Fitz said Chunk apt wounded his jaw successful a combat with different bear.

The contention is wildly popular. This twelvemonth it attracted implicit 1.5 cardinal votes from fans who watched the ursines gorge connected a grounds tally of autumn salmon arsenic they fished successful the Brooks River astir 300 miles from Anchorage.

It is the largest glut of salmon successful the surviving memories of the bears oregon the humans who person been moving the Fat Bear Week contention since 2014, according to Katmai Conservancy spokesperson Naomi Boak.

That abundance “decreased struggle successful the stream since salmon were readily available,” Boak said successful an email. In Tuesday's announcement, Katmai National Park ranger Sarah Bruce estimated astir 200,000 salmon made their mode up Brooks River.

In leaner years, the toughest bears jockey for the champion sportfishing spots astatine Brooks Falls, wherever the salmon converge successful a bottleneck and leap from the h2o arsenic they combat their mode upstream to spawn.

This year, Brooks Falls sportfishing spots were often bare arsenic bears hunted up and down stream. There was adjacent country for humans to fish. At 1 constituent Monday, 1 of the Explore.org unrecorded cameras showed 2 radical calmly casting sportfishing rods on the stream adjacent arsenic brownish bears plodded upstream and downstream from them.

Voters successful the online contention could reappraisal earlier and aft photos of the bears, thin astatine the commencement of summertime and fattened astatine the end. The bears are not really weighed — that would beryllium excessively unsafe and hard — and immoderate fans take their favourite based connected looks oregon backstory.

The unrecorded cameras astatine Brooks Falls captured the moments successful 2024 erstwhile parent carnivore 128 Grazer’s cub slipped implicit the waterfall and floated into the sportfishing spot occupied by Chunk, who attacked and injured the cub. Grazer fought Chunk, but the cub yet died. After the melodramatic fight, voting fans handed Grazer a triumph implicit Chunk.

Fat Bear Week was started successful 2014 arsenic an interactive mode to pass the nationalist astir brownish bears, the coastal cousins of grizzlies. They walk summers catching and eating arsenic galore salmon arsenic imaginable truthful they tin fatten up for hibernation successful Alaska's cold, thin winters.