Fat Bear Week: US shutdown threatens to trample over Alaska’s annual contest

A looming government shutdown threatens to claw its way into a crowd-pleasing Alaska tradition: Fat Bear Week.

Alaska’s most-watched popularity contest, Fat Bear Week involves residents picking their favorite fat brown bear who’s been stocking up for winter by noshing on salmon in Katmai national park & preserve. Viewers of the bears vote online in tournament-style brackets for those they want to advance to the next round until a champion is crowned in the weeklong contest.

More than 1m votes were cast last year.

Problem is, national park employees count and release those votes – and a shutdown will not allow them to do so because it would trigger a ban on using the park’s official social media accounts for as long as the government is closed.

“Should a lapse happen, we will need to postpone Fat Bear Week,” Cynthia Hernandez, a park spokesperson, said in an email to the Associated Press.

Last year’s contest was rocked by scandal as organizers discovered that the ballot box had been “stuffed” in favor of a brown bear named Holly.

“Like bears stuff their face with fish, our ballot box, too, has been stuffed,” Katmai national park tweeted. “It appears someone has decided to spam the Fat Bear Week poll, but fortunately it is easy for us to tell which votes are fraudulent.”

If Congress does not reach an agreement to fund the federal government, operations will shut down Sunday. This year’s Fat Bear Week contest is set to begin Wednesday.

The National Park Service estimates that 2,200 brown bears inhabit the park, a number exceeding the number of people who live on the peninsula. Bears have six to eight months to eat a year’s worth of food and ensure their survival through winter, according to the service.

The competition to determine which ursine candidate has gained the most weight between summer and fall began in 2014 and has become globally popular. Katmai park rangers select 12 bears and provide two photos of the animals, one taken in mid-July and the other taken in early September.

The bears eat a considerable amount during this stretch – a diet consisting mainly of salmon – to gain weight in preparation for winter hibernation. Katmai’s bears are some of the largest in the world, according to the park’s website. An adult male can weigh 600lbs to 900lbs in mid-summer and be well over 1,000lbs by November. Adult females average about a third less in weight than males.

The Katmai brown bears are famous for standing at Brooks Falls, catching sockeye salmon in their mouths to fatten up for the winter. They’re a huge draw for the park on the Alaska peninsula, the arm of land extending from Alaska’s south-west corner toward the Aleutian Islands about 250 miles (402.3km) south-west of Anchorage.

The spectacle draws so many visitors that three viewing stands have been erected near the falls, along with a bridge and boardwalk over the Brooks River to allow visitors to avoid the bears.

Several cameras operated by explore.org provide live streams of the bears at Katmai.