page_title: Katmai National Park and Preserve
section_title: Ecosystems
hierarchical_section_title: Katmai National Park and Preserve / Ecosystems
caption_attribution_description: English: Katmai National Park and Preserve, Brooks Falls, Alaska, USA, brown bear catches salmon at top of falls
context_page_description: Katmai National Park and Preserve is an American national park and preserve in southern Alaska, notable for the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes and for its brown bears. The park and preserve encompass 4,093,077 acres, which is between the sizes of Connecticut and New Jersey. Most of the national park is a designated wilderness area where all hunting is banned. The park is named after Mount Katmai, its centerpiece stratovolcano. The park is located on the Alaska Peninsula, across from Kodiak Island, with headquarters in nearby King Salmon, about 290 miles southwest of Anchorage. The area was first designated a national monument in 1918 to protect the area around the major 1912 volcanic eruption of Novarupta, which formed the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, a 40-square-mile, 100-to-700-foot-deep pyroclastic flow. The park includes as many as 18 individual volcanoes, seven of which have been active since 1900.
  Initially designated because of its volcanic history, the monument was left undeveloped and largely unvisited until the 1950s.
context_section_description: Weather at Katmai is variable, though reliably rainy or drizzly. Summer high temperatures average about 63 °F (17 °C) and winter lows are between −4 and 40 °F (−20 and 4 °C). Fall is somewhat drier than the rest of the year, and warm days can occur year-round. Rainfall is heaviest near the coast, with up to 60 inches (150 cm), and lighter to the west. The park supports 29 mammal species, 137 bird species, 24 freshwater fish species and four anadromous fish species.
  Mammal species that inhabit Katmai include snowshoe hare, moose, timber wolf, brown bear, coyote, beaver, lynx, wolverine, river otter, mink,  Arctic and red fox species, weasel, porcupine, and marten. Marine mammals include the harbor seal, sea lion, sea otter, beluga whale, killer whale and gray whale. Caribou are occasionally within the park during winter seasons.
  The most important fish in the park are sockeye salmon, which feed bears, bald eagles and others during their spawning runs in the park's rivers. Salmon enter the Naknek River drainage from Bristol Bay in June and July and spawn from August to October.
caption: Bear catches salmon at Brooks Falls
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