A brown bear known as 89 Backpack has been named the winner of this year's Fat Bear Week, an annual online contest held in Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. In the final round, Backpack narrowly beat a bear known as 910, taking 103,344 votes to 98,253. The US National Parks Service described the final as a "battle of size, skill, snack acquisition, and strategic loafing".

Sixteen bears took part in a single-elimination, bracket-style tournament, with voting done online. The park service thanked the bears for having "involuntarily participated". Backpack's mother, Holly, won the contest in 2019. His name comes from his habit, as a cub, of climbing onto her back when she waded through the salmon-filled Brooks River. On his way to the final, Backpack beat a bear called Bucky, who had earlier knocked out last year's champion, Chunk (Bear 32).

The result was not without dissent. Supporters of Bear 910, a female who raised both her biological cub and an adopted niece, argued she deserved the title. One voter called her a "larger bear all around" and said Backpack "just has a bigger booty"; another said 910 "really put in the work this year". Backpack's fans, meanwhile, praised him as a "big fuzzy boy". Bear 132, one of the largest and most experienced mothers at Brooks River, reached the semifinals with her three spring cubs before losing to 910.

Fat Bear Week began in 2014 as a way to engage the public with brown bears, the coastal relatives of grizzlies. Katmai is on the Alaska Peninsula, which stretches from the southwest of the state toward the Aleutian Islands, and is home to about 2,200 brown bears. (Sources differ on the contest's age: one counts this as the 13th year, another the 12th.) Organisers, including the nonprofit explore.org, which runs livestream cameras at the river, say "fat bears are successful bears".

The contest highlights a survival strategy. Bears gorge on salmon returning to the Brooks River from late June, eating as many as 30 fish a day to build the fat reserves they need for winter. Adult males typically weigh 600 to 900 pounds (about 270 to 410 kilograms) in midsummer and can exceed 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms) by the time they hibernate; females are about one-third smaller. During hibernation, which can last up to six months, bears neither eat nor drink and lose about one-third of their body weight. This year's field included five bear families, reflecting a record number of mothers and cubs at the river, where cubs face risks from other bears, especially when food is scarce.