Bear death caught on camera postpones Fat Bear Week plans: 'Hard realities'

The candidates for this year's Fat bear week were not announced Monday as planned after a skirmish between two Alaskan grizzly bears in Katmai National Park resulted in the death of one of the animals. Their fight was captured in a livestream by the multimedia organization Explore.org, which partners with the National Park Service to host the annual bear competition and makes videos available online for fans to participate and vote.

“Today a bear killed another bear by the river. It was captured live on the webcams and we thought we couldn't move forward with our Fat Bear Week reveal without addressing this situation first,” said Mike Fritz, the resident naturalist at Explore.org, in a livestream conversation on Monday , which took place in place of the planned unveiling. The 2024 Fat Bear Week series reveal has been moved to Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. ET.

The fight between a male brown bear and an older female – one of last year's participants, known as Bear 402 – took place at the mouth of the Brooks River in Katmai, a protected area on the Alaska Peninsula that attracts some of the region's largest grizzly bears According to the National Park Service, they feed on sockeye salmon. The bears are currently chasing the end of the seasonal salmon run as they prepare for hibernation in the coming winter months.

“National parks like Katmai protect not only the wonders of nature, but also harsh realities,” Matt Johnson of the National Park Service said in a statement obtained by KTUU following the killing of Bear 402. “Every bear seen on the webcams is competing with others for survival.”

Fritz said the bear's death and the events leading up to it were difficult to watch. He and Sarah Bruce, a park ranger in Katmai, discussed the circumstances that could have triggered the fight between 402 and the male bear 469, which they said was too protracted for a normal confrontation over food.

“We know at this time of year that bears are in this state of hyperphagia, eating whatever they can,” Bruce said. “I don’t know why a bear would want to expend so much energy killing another bear for food. It is unusual for a bear to prey on another bear, but it is not completely impossible. That’s how it is.” It’s hard to say how it started.

Hyperphagia is the bears' winter preparation process in which they spend almost all of their time eating and drinking to gain mass before retreating to their dens. Survival during hibernation depends on how much they can eat during this phase of the year, wildlife officials say.

Fat Bear Week is billed by the National Park Service as a “celebration” of their success as hibernation approaches. Cameras follow a series of giant grizzly bears that call Katmai home as viewers watch and vote for their favorites, which then go through several rounds until a winner is chosen. As lighthearted as the event may be, Fritz said what happened Monday was a reminder of the threats these bears often face in the wild.

“We love celebrating the success of bears with full stomachs and plenty of body fat,” Fritz said. “But the ferocity of bears is real, the risks they face are real, their lives can be hard and their deaths painful.”

Fritz said Bear 402 was “loved.” The animal probably died from drowning, he added.