A massive brown bear named Chunk, winner of the 2025 Fat Bear Week competition, has been spotted in Alaska’s Katmai National Park.
The accompanying footage was captured this week by National Park Service maintenance workers.
Chunk the brown bear in 2025.
It shows a hibernation-slimmed Chunk walking across snow in what Fat Bear Week declared via Instagram to be the “Return of the Champ.”
Late April and May are when Katmai National Park’s brown bears begin to emerge from hibernation. But the salmon-gorging season on the Brooks River won’t ramp up until late June.
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According to the Katmai Conservancy, Chunk is cataloged as Bear 32, a male brown bear first identified in 2007.
He earned his nickname because “his large hindquarters give him a chunky silhouette.”
Some Fat Bear Week followers noted that Chunk’s jaw appears to be somewhat healed, although that’s difficult to ascertain based on the footage.
Chunk emerged last year with a broken jaw and split lip that looked painful but did not prevent him from feeding throughout the summer and fall. (See top image.)
The Katmai Conservancy wrote after Fat Bear Week: “Chunk is a prime example of what it means to be resilient. Facing a broken jaw throughout the summer, nobody knew what the season would look like for him, but there is no denying that he defied all expectations.”
Fat Bear Week is a fan-driven, bracket-style competition conducted each fall as a celebration of the bears’ success in packing enough calories to keep them sustained through the winter. Fans can watch the bears via live-feed cameras that will become active during the summer.
Explore.org currently has a 2025 highlight video playing on its Brooks Falls cam.
This article originally appeared on For The Win: Famously fat brown bear named Chunk out of hibernation in Alaska