Fat Bear Week: The Final Result

This year’s fat bear winner is Otis! Credit: Lancy Shi

Megan Wang, Reporter
January 16, 2023

After a week of voting, the results are out, and the winner has been announced for this year’s “Fat Bear Week Champion.” This year’s 2022 winner is Otis. 

According to Explore.com, Otis is known to have a grizzly brown coat, floppy ears, and a light brown patch of fur on his coat in the fall. “He has light brown fur in early summer. By autumn, his coat becomes grizzled brown, and he sports a patch of blonder fur on his left shoulder,” states Explore.com. Otis was first recognized in 2001, and is a current resident in the common area: Brooks Falls. 

Otis currently faces competition with other younger adult bears for territory and food and is usually the one to lose the brawl. Since Otis is older, his health is gradually declining, evident through his lack of energy and deterioration of his teeth. Despite old age, Otis is still the reigning champion for the fattest bear titles, including Fat Bear Tuesday 2014, Far Bear Week Champion 2016, 2017, and 2021. According to Explore.com, most of his success comes from patience, skill, and using energy wisely. 

As mentioned in nps.gov, “Fat Bear Week” is a week to celebrate the brown bears’ survival, adaptability, and strength in Katmai, Alaska. Fat Bear Week has continued for nine consecutive years and was created by Mike Fitz in 2007. Mike Fitz: a former park ranger for Katmai National Park, originally created “Fat Bear Week” to publicize and engage visitors of Katmai’s natural wildlife. The idea suddenly took off and soon became known throughout the United States, and just last year, the contest attracted 600,000 votes. “I thought it would be a quirky thing Katmai could do every year, and it is, but I did not expect it to be this popular,” stated Fitz in an interview with the New York Times. 

Fat Bear Week has become a week-long contest of the largest, strongest, bulkiest bears of Katmai National Park. Public voting was held from October 5th to October 11th and was accessible through explore.org. 

This year 12 bears, including Chunk, Grazer, Walker, Holly, Otis, Divot, and bears numbers 164, 335, 747, 856, 901, and 909’s yearling club, participated in the competition. In order for these bears to have participated, they had to fall under special requirements, such as having to be in a 1.5-mile radius of Brooks River and being able to be monitored in early summer and fall. According to New York Times, Park Rangers use their year-long observations to create special biographies of each bear’s habits, food choices, personality characteristics, mating, and weight gain. This competition has helped millions of viewers worldwide learn more about brown bears and the interesting habits of their year-long preparation for hibernation even though bears are unaware that they are attracting visitors worldwide by just doing their daily routine.