Katmai National Park Brown Bear Webcam

You’re going to need a good dose of patience watching this live feed streamed by the National Park Service if you’re hoping to catch a glimpse of a brown bear. It’s not a zoo so the bears are not in an enclosure, but living their best lives in the wild just as they should be. While you’re waiting for the bears to appear, and appear they will – eventually – the scenery and accompanying sounds of the wildlife will keep you suitably entertained.

Katmai National Park and Preserve covers an immense stretch of territory in southwest Alaska. And if current statistics are correct, well over two thousand brown bears call the park’s sixteen-thousand plus square kilometres home. They thrive in this wilderness landscape of active volcanoes on fish they catch in the salmon-rich rivers or along the coastline supplementing their diet with shellfish and vegetation. It’s a diet so rich in nutrients that the bears in the park can weigh anywhere up to five-hundred kilos or more when they’re fully mature.

If you’re bear spotting from mid-summer to September then you may well notice the bears you see getting bigger by the day. It’s not an optical illusion. Bears began to gorge on food around this time so they can gain enough body fat to survive the long months of winter. Yes, you guessed right. If you drop by this feed from late October onwards, you’ll have to make do with the snowy scenery as the bears will be snoozing away in their dens until springtime.