'Fat Bear Week' 2024 Postponed After Bear Killed on Livestream

The start to 2024's Fat Bear Week , which was supposed to kick-off on Monday, did not go as planned after two Alaskan grizzlies engaged in a brutal fight on the livestream in Katmai National Park, leaving one bear dead. As a result, the reveal of this year's contestants in the March Madness-style bracket has been pushed back until Tuesday evening.

The tournament has been held annually by Alaska's Katmai National Park and Preserve since 2014, giving bear fans the opportunity to vote on which of the park's brown bears has had the greatest success in preparation for winter hibernation. However, this marks the first year that the competition has been impacted by bear-on-bear violence.

According to CBS News , the fight went down between a previous contestant, an older female bear known as Bear 402, and a male brown bear identified at Bear 469, at the mouth of the Brooks River in Katmai where the bears feed on sockeye salmon to fatten up for the winter months. It's unclear what sparked the encounter, but National Park officials said that it did not appear to be a typical confrontation over food.

Mike Fritz, resident naturalist at Explore.org , the multimedia organization that hosts the livestream, explained during what would have been the annual unveiling on Monday why the competition was being delayed.

"Earlier today, a bear killed another bear on the river. It was caught live on the webcams and we thought, well, we can't go ahead with our Fat Bear Week bracket reveal without addressing this situation first," Fritz said. "We love to celebrate the success of bears with full stomachs and ample body fat. But the ferocity of bears is real, the risks that they face are real, their lives can be hard and their deaths can be painful."

Fritz added that Bear 402 was "beloved" and unfortunately most likely died by drowning.

Katmai park ranger Sarah Bruce noted that when bears are in a state of hyperphagia—the period of excessive eating which takes place in late summer and fall—they will eat anything and everything they can. But still, it doesn't explain the confrontation between the two apex predators.

"I don't know why a bear would want to expend so much energy trying to kill another bear as a food source," Bruce said. "It's an uncommon thing to see a bear predating on another bear, but it's not completely out of the question. So it's hard to say how this started."

"National parks like Katmai protect not only the wonders of nature, but also the harsh realities," National Park Service spokesperson Matt Johnson in a statement . "Each bear seen on the webcams is competing with others to survive."