Brown bear “89 Backpack” crowned Fat Bear Week winner

A male brown bear named 89 Backpack won this year’s Fat Bear Week, an online pageant for the bear best exemplifying fatness and success in preparing for winter, according to explore.org. He beat 15 other brown bears from Alaska’s Katmai National Park in a single-elimination tournament to win the contest. Backpack, about 20 years old, lives in the park, gorging on salmon from the Brooks River each summer to prepare for a long hibernation period.

This year’s Fat Bear Week was the most popular contest yet, with hundreds of thousands of people casting digital ballots, according to explore.org, which hosts the voting system. Backpack received 103,344 votes, while Bear 910, a female, took second place with 98,253, according to the website. The online contest began in 2014 and is held yearly to bring awareness to Katmai National Park’s ecosystem.

Backpack received his name after Katmai park observers noticed him frequently climbing onto his mother’s back as a first-year cub in 2006. His mother, Holly, was also a Fat Bear Week champion, according to explore.org. Backpack tends to be less aggressive than many other male bears, but still managed to stake his claim on prime fishing spots this summer, according to the website.