A Tuesday night sighting of Bear 480 Otis, one of the oldest and most popular brown bears in Alaska’s Katmai National Park & Preserve, was a moment worthy of celebration.
“Otis is indeed in the house,” the park announced Wednesday on Facebook. “480 Otis is one of our oldest and probably most beloved bear. He has been missing in action. Last year he arrived at the Brooks River on June 23rd. The latest he has ever arrived is July 17th. We were concerned.”
The male brown bear, first identified in 2001 as a subadult or young adult, is believed to be 25 or 26 years old.
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Bear 480 Otis is a fixture at Brooks Falls and an occasional star on the park’s live bear cam. He was the inspiration for the 2008 Katmai National Park booster pin. Footage of Otis appears in the 2014 Disneynature Movie, “Bears.”
Otis is a past winner of the park’s annual Fat Bear Week competition, which celebrates “all the hard work that these bears do to survive and thrive and get through six months of starvation,” Naomi Boak, a park media ranger, told the Washington Post.
But as Bear 480 Otis ages, park employees and the bruin’s many fans become worried when he does not arrive at the river in the same timely manner as younger bears.
On Wednesday a bear-cam viewer who had not heard the good news commented, “Otis is a master fisher bear! The younger bears should watch and learn. Come back soon Otis, miss you already.”
The park concluded its Facebook announcement by stating, “Brown bears lead challenging lives and 26 is quite an achievement, especially for a male bear. So celebrate the return of Bear 480 Otis with us!”
–Image courtesy of NPS Photo/N. Boak
