Filed by Sunny, weather and uplifting correspondent
Katmai National Park has answered one of democracy’s weightiest questions: bear 32, known as Chunk, is the 2025 Fat Bear Week champion.
The National Park Service lists Chunk at the top of its official hall of champions after the September 2025 tournament. The annual event uses a head-to-head public bracket to celebrate the dramatic seasonal growth of Katmai’s wild brown bears—and the salmon-rich ecosystem that makes it possible.
In other words, the campaign platform was fish, the constituency was international, and the winning strategy was becoming magnificently prepared for winter.
A title built one salmon at a time
Fat Bear Week began in 2014 as a one-day online event. It later expanded into a weeklong tournament in which voters compare bears’ early- and late-season appearances and choose their favorites.
The 2025 contest ran from September 23 through September 30. Chunk emerged as champion, succeeding 128 Grazer, who won in both 2023 and 2024.
Here, fat is a survival story
The joke lands because the bears’ transformation can be spectacular. The science matters because those reserves are essential.
Katmai’s brown bears feed heavily during the warmer months, when salmon are abundant. During hibernation, the bears rely on stored fat as their metabolism slows. The National Park Service says they may lose up to one-third of their body weight over that period, and large bears can add hundreds of pounds before entering their dens.
The tournament is therefore less a beauty contest than an annual celebration of ecological work going right: productive waters, returning salmon, and bears able to prepare for winter.
The bracket with a conservation lesson inside
More than one million votes were cast in 2024 from 100 countries, according to the park’s 2025 announcement. The contest is run through a partnership involving the National Park Service, Explore.org, and the Katmai Conservancy, with bear cameras helping viewers follow the animals remotely.
The bears themselves are not campaigning, posing for weigh-ins, or asking for online attention. They are living as wild bears in Katmai. The tournament is a human frame placed around a real seasonal process.
Chunk’s official victory is delightfully easy to celebrate. A bear ate what a bear needed to eat. An intact ecosystem helped make it possible. The internet, for once, applauded appropriate preparation.
Sources: National Park Service: “Fat Bear Week: Past and Present”; National Park Service: 2025 Fat Bear Week announcement.
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