Katmai National Park and Preserve is on a peninsula in southern Alaska. Its wild landscapes span tundra, forests, lakes and mountains. The park is known for the many brown bears that are drawn to the abundant salmon in Brooks Falls. Lookout platforms at adjacent Brooks Camp offer close-up views of the bears. The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is an area of lava flows and ash formed by a massive volcanic eruption.
Katmai was declared a national monument in 1918 to preserve the living laboratory of its cataclysmic 1912 volcanic eruption, particularly the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. The intervening years have seen most of the geothermal features cool, but the protection of brown bears has become an equally compelling charge for Katmai.
To protect this magnificent animal and its varied habitat, the boundaries were extended over the years, and in 1980 the area was designated a national park and preserve. Katmai’s awe-inspiring natural powers confront us most visibly in its volcanics and its brown bears.
Brown bears add an intimidating and exciting element to the Katmai landscape. More bears (approximately 2,200) inhabit Katmai than probably any other national park in world.
Katmai was designated a national monument in 1918 to preserve features associated with one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions ever recorded. However, later expansions and the change in status to Katmai did not focused on geologic activity but rather on the importance wildlife.
Today, one of the primary purposes of Katmai National Park and Preserve, based on legislation, is to protect habitats for and populations of fish and wildlife, including, but not limited to, high concentrations of brown bears and their denning areas, and maintain unimpaired the watersheds and water habitat vital to red salmon spawning.
Situated at the mouth of the Brooks River and the shore of Naknek Lake, Brooks Camp attracts people from all over the world to view brown bears fishing for salmon.
Every summer, the sockeye salmon swim up the Brooks River to their spawning point. By the time they get to the Brooks River, they are already fatigued from the long journey.
Now, they have to swim upriver and cross several more hurdles, to make it to their spawning location. Just leaping up out of the water, to get up and over the Brooks Falls, is a huge task. But add in a hungry brown bear, perched on top of the waterfall. A bear on a mission to fatten up as much as possible before winter arrives.
The lucky salmon are able to get past both the falls and the bears. Those that aren’t so lucky help the bears put on pounds before heading into winter. I read that between 200,000 and 400,000 salmon successfully make it upriver each year!
At Katmai, cubs will generally stay with their mothers for two and a half years. During a cub’s first year of life, they are considered cubs-of-the-year or spring cubs. In their second year, they are generally called yearlings and will den with their mother for at least one more winter.
Cubs generally stay close to their mothers, first nursing and then learning how to fish and hunt for themselves. Play among siblings is fun to watch but is also an important way for cubs to develop life skills. Male bears play no role in raising young and can actually be a threat to them.
Bears between two and a half and five years old are known as sub-adults. They are independent of their mothers, but not yet sexually mature.
All grizzly bears are brown bears, but not all brown bears are grizzly bears. The bears at Katmai are brown bears. Grizzly bears and brown bears are the same species, but grizzly bears are currently considered to be a separate subspecies. Due to a few morphological differences, Kodiak bears are also considered to be a distinct subspecies of brown bear, but are very similar to Katmai’s brown bears in diet and habits.
Even though grizzlies are considered to be a subspecies of brown bear, the difference between a grizzly bear and a brown bear is fairly arbitrary. In North America, brown bears are generally considered to be those of the species that have access to coastal food resources like salmon. Grizzly bears live further inland and typically do not have access to marine-derived food resources.
Besides habitat and diet, there are physical and (arguably) temperamental differences between brown and grizzly bears. Large male brown bears in Katmai can routinely weigh over 1000 pounds in the fall. In contrast, grizzly bears in Yellowstone National Park weigh far less on average. There have been no documented cases of grizzly bears weighing over 900 pounds in Yellowstone. Additionally, grizzly bears seem to react to humans at greater distances than brown bears.
Bears are armed with tremendous strength, large claws, and teeth. They can inflict severe injuries to each other. For this reason bears avoid fighting in most cases.
Bears are generally solitary creatures, but they predictably congregate around high quality food sources. To avoid physical conflicts, bears use a series of vocalizations and body posturing to express temperament and dominance. Less dominant bears (typically smaller subadult bears and females) yield space, like fishing spots, and resources, like a dead salmon, to more dominant bears (larger bears and adult males). Through the establishment of a fluid hierarchy, bears have evolved a social adaptation that allows them to avoid fighting in most instances.
