'Backpack' declared Alaska's Fat Bear Week winner
A brown bear named 89 Backpack has been crowned the winner of Katmai National Park's annual Fat Bear Week competition. The event celebrates the bears' weight gain in preparation for their winter hibernation.
Why it matters
The competition serves as a popular educational tool for wildlife conservation and public engagement with national park ecosystems.
Image source, Explore.org Image caption, Backpack, the winning bear, after months of eating to gain weight ahead of hibernating in winter.
A brown bear known as 89 Backpack has won the annual Fat Bear Week competition, after what the US National Parks Service described as a "battle of size, skill, snack acquisition, and strategic loafing".
Backpack's wideness narrowly defeated a bear known only as 910, earning 103,344 votes to 910's 98,253 in the final round of the competition, which is run by the Katmai National Park in Alaska.
The National Parks Service thanked the 16 bears who "involuntarily participated" in the competition, now in its thirteenth year.
Backpack, who was described by one supporter as having both the "chonk and the badonk", will shortly enter hibernation, which can last up to six months.
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