Gentle giant Backpack wins Alaska’s Fat Bear Week

What the report says

Backpack, the brown bear known officially as Bear 89, has won Fat Bear Week at Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve, according to Al Jazeera’s report. The annual online contest, run by a nonprofit, is designed to highlight the bears’ ability to gain weight before winter hibernation. This year’s bracket featured 16 bears, with voting completed online after a livestream viewing period for the public.

Al Jazeera reported that Backpack secured the title with more than 100,000 votes, narrowly defeating Bear 910 in the final. The bear is described as a calm and unusually non-aggressive adult male, earning the nickname “gentle giant.” His profile in the contest emphasized his “quiet strength” rather than fighting behavior, and his supporters pointed to his lineage and long familiarity with Brooks River.

The article says Backpack is the son of former Fat Bear Week winner Holly, who brought him to Brooks River when he was a cub in 2006. The bear’s name comes from the way he used to climb onto his mother’s back while they crossed the river. The contest has run since 2014 and is meant to educate the public about the brown bears that gather at the river to feed on salmon.

More broadly, Fat Bear Week has become a conservation-focused spectacle, drawing attention to the health and resilience of the roughly 2,200 brown bears in the preserve on the Alaska Peninsula.