Voting opens for Fat Bear Week at Brooks River

Voting opened this week for Fat Bear Week, the annual online contest that asks the public to pick the chubbiest brown bear at Brooks River in Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. The weeklong bracketed tournament runs Sept. 23 through Sept. 30, with 12 bears competing — 11 adult contenders and 128 Junior, the winner of last week’s Fat Bear Jr. competition — and the champion to be declared Sept. 30. Voting is conducted online at the event website and via Explore.org’s bear cams.

Organizers say the contest, founded in 2014 by former Katmai ranger and Explore.org naturalist Mike Fitz, is intended to highlight the bears’ resilience as they gorge on sockeye salmon to build fat stores needed to survive winter hibernation. Explore.org lists daily poll hours from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Central Daylight Time, which corresponds to noon to 9 p.m. Eastern; some reports cited different hourly windows, but the contest page provides the official schedule. Voters choose between paired bears in a single elimination bracket; eight bears will face off in the first round and four receive byes into the second round.

Brooks River is one of the world’s most productive brown-bear viewing sites, and...