Gorging on bearcam: the livestream of big beasts eating that draws millions
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- Brooks Falls bearcam was watched 7.3m times between 22 June and 4 August — up 70% from the same period in 2025 and more than double the views it attracted in 2024.
- Explore.org director Candice Rusch attributed the surge to bears returning to the falls in large numbers after last year's high salmon run spread fish across the wider river.
- The cameras, first installed in 2012 to bring remote wildlife into people's homes, typically show more than a dozen brown bears prowling the rocky falls for sockeye salmon.
- East Carolina University's Dr Jeffrey Skibins said nature-based webcams benefit wildlife by improving conservation attitudes, behaviours and awareness, calling them a viable addition — not a replacement — for time spent outdoors.
- Dedicated viewers identify individual bears by ear shape, nose and body features; one fan logged a bear named Otis eating 42 salmon in a single sitting — more than 100,000 calories.
- Katmai's annual Fat Bear Week, a knockout-style public vote to crown the park's fattest bear as animals pile on winter weight before hibernation, begins next month.
Why it matters: The 70% viewership surge gives Explore.org a captive seven-million-strong audience just as Katmai's Fat Bear Week launches in September, converting passive wildlife-watching into a measurable conservation foothold — Skibins said viewers who learn to identify individual bears develop the protective attitudes that drive real-world conservation behaviour.
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