Amid ... Everything Else, Fat Bear Week Soldiers On

The brawny bruins on the Alaska Peninsula are ready to brawl it out to see which will win this year's fattest bear title in the wildly popular annual Fat Bear Week contest. The main event featuring adult bears starts next week, but first up Thursday is what the National Park Service calls a "chubby cubby appetizer." Fat Bear Jr. voters can cast ballots through Friday for their favorite adolescent ursine, with the winner advancing to the big show, per the AP. The contest, which began in 2014, is meant to showcase the resiliency of the brown bears, which pack on the pounds each fall to survive the harsh winter by gorging on salmon at Brooks River in the remote Katmai National Park and Preserve. People can watch the bears on livestream cameras. This year's sockeye run has been abundant, so voters can expect some especially corpulent contestants. More:

• How to vote: The 12 bears, to be announced Monday, will be featured in a single-elimination, bracket-style tournament. All voting is done online at www.fatbearweek.org, with the winner declared Sept. 30.
• Stats: There are about 2,200 brown bears within Katmai, a 6,562-square-mile park on the Alaska Peninsula. To be featured in the contest, the bears must frequent the area of the main Brooks Camp.
• How big are they? Weighing the bears would be a dangerous, monumental task, so it's up to voters to judge size by looks alone. Male brown bears at Katmai weigh about 700 to 900 pounds by midsummer and can bloat to over 1,000 pounds by September or October, thanks to successful foraging. A 1,200-pound male bear isn't unusual at Katmai; some have been estimated to be about 1,400 pounds. Females are about half to two-thirds the size of adult males.
• Other criteria: There are factors other than girth to consider, according to naturalist Mike Fitz, who started the contest when he was a ranger at Katmai. Voters could consider the challenges some contestants have had to overcome, such as the multitasking females who protect their young and produce milk for the cubs while also fattening up for winter themselves.
• Advantage for the moms? There's precedent for a mama bear to take the prize. Grazer, the two-time defending Fat Bear Week champion, beat Chunk, one of the biggest bears in the Brooks River, in last year's final.

More here.