Backpack edges past Dancing Queen to win the Fat Bear Week title

Key Points:

• Backpack, a 20-year-old brown bear at Alaska’s Katmai National Park, won the 2024 Fat Bear Week title by a narrow margin of about 5,000 votes in a public online contest celebrating the bears' ability to fatten up on salmon before hibernation.
• The competition saw over 2.3 million votes cast overall, with more than 200,000 votes in the final round, highlighting its popularity in drawing attention to the park’s nearly 2,000 brown bears.
• Backpack’s mother, Holly, previously won the contest in 2017 and was poised to win again in 2022 before a vote-rigging scandal was uncovered, though public engagement has continued to grow since.
• Known formally as Bear 89 and weighing approximately 1,200 lbs, Backpack has been a familiar figure on the park’s live cams since 2012 and has overcome challenges such as a serious leg injury in 2007.
• The runner-up, Bear 910 or “Dancing Queen,” is noted for her distinctive fishing movements and also comes from a lineage of previous winners, underscoring the ongoing public fascination with these bears’ survival and seasonal weight gain.