Webcams Make Katmai Bears Accessible

Webcams Make Katmai Bears Accessible By Judy Kesler 907-644-3513 July 24, 2012 In this photo, taken on July 17th, a brown bear eats a salmon caught at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park. Photo from Brooks Falls webcam. Katmai National Park and Preserve is one of the premier brown bear viewing areas in the world. The most recent bear survey documented over 2000 brown bears in the park and preserve. At Brooks Camp, the most visited area of the park, brown bears congregate to feed on sockeye salmon at Brooks Falls or elsewhere along the Brooks River. Katmai National Park is both difficult to reach and expensive for most visitors. The park draws just under 10,000 visitors a year, but about 2,200 bears live there. About 100 of them are in the Brooks Camp area. The park’s remoteness has added challenges to the goal of bringing the bears of Katmai to the public using technology and webcams. A previous attempt to set up live bear cams from Katmai with a museum in Homer, Alaska, failed due to multiple problems. "It takes a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money, and the webcams will make it accessible to anyone with access to a computer, a smartphone, a tablet device,” Roy Wood, chief of interpretation, said in a media interview. The park recently partnered with the Pearls of the Planet initiative for explore.org, underwritten by the Annenberg Foundation to assist with making this goal a reality. After months of hard work, the webcams are up and running. There are currently two cameras running, although two more are scheduled to come live in the near future. The cameras are powered by solar and wind energy. Microwave signals are sent to the Dumpling Mountain camera, which are then sent to King Salmon, Alaska, where a T1 connection allows for the high-definition cameras to be broadcast to the Internet. In addition to the webcams coming live, the park has created a publication, Brown Bears of Brooks Camp to identify the bears and learn more about their life stories. Link to BROOKS FALLS CAMERA webpage Link to LOWER RIVER CAMERA webpage Direct link to partners page and cameras: http://explore.org/#!/live-cams/player/brown-bear-salmon-cam-brooks-falls