Brown bear mother and cub in Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska, USA

© Suzi Eszterhas/Minden Picture

The bears of summer. Brown bears, Katmai National Park and Preserve, USA

Summer up north belongs to the bears. When the sun reigns, so do the brown bears of the US state of Alaska, like this mother and cub in Katmai National Park and Preserve. Also known here as grizzly bears, the brown bears pack a year of living into the summer months, foraging, feasting, fighting and mating under skies of nearly perpetual daylight.

The Alaskan variety of brown bears are the biggest in the world due, in no small part, to the summer bounty of food found on their home turf. Alaska springs to life in summer, and the bears take full advantage, eating their fill to pile on the pounds ahead of winter hibernation, which can last up to eight months. They’ll eat berries, flowers, roots, fish, small mammals like beaver and big ones like caribou. The biggest are found on Kodiak Island, where a subspecies of about 3,500 bears have lived in isolation for 12,000 years. Kodiak bears can weigh up to 120 stone, three times the weight of some of their North American and Eurasian cousins.

Katmai is a lush wonderland of mountain ranges, valleys, lakes and rivers. There are no roads into the region, keeping pesky humans at bay. (Visitors must use boats or floatplanes.) In short, this mom and baby are living large in bear paradise.