Katmai bears star in nature's 'Jersey Shore'

Last year, in October, long after rangers packed up and left the park for the winter, viewers noticed a bearprotecting a kill site. When the cameras came online the next day (they're shut off to conserve solar power), there was a different bear — nicknamed Lurch — on top of the cache, which had more than doubled in size.

Rangers speculated on what was in the cache. The contents were confirmed one day as Lurch was tearing the cache apart to snack on a smaller bear.

"We now know that Lurch killed another bear. For some of the people, that was traumatic," he said.

The comment board on the web site lit up: "Lurch is a killer!" ''He's psychotic!" ''When is the park service going to kill him so he doesn't kill again?"

Wood said he logged into the comment board and explained this was natural behavior and to a bear, it's all about calories, getting fat before winter.

By the end of the week, the comments had almost completely changed, and were noting admiration for Lurch's strength, his survival instincts, and power, universal concepts that park service personnel also use when talking about bears.

"It was wonderful to see the tide completely shift," Wood said. "For me, that was really assuring because up to that point, you could almost argue the cameras were a novelty."

Shawn Turner is one of those dedicated members of the community who watched Lurch from his home in Portland, Ore. He said he enjoyed not only watching people's reactions to the kill, but actually seeing one beareat another.

"You don't see that every day," he said.

Turner said he's wanted to visit Katmai for years and watching the webcams motivated him to make the trip this year. Turner, who works in the finance department for computer chip maker Intel Corp., camped for two weeks at the park.

He experienced many things that the web cams can't prepare you for, including sharing Brooks Camp with thebears.

At the height of the season, there will be up to 70 brown bears within one square mile of the camp, and it's common to see bears walking or running as humans make their way through camp.

Turner said it was a little unnerving the first day, but you loosen up after you experience it a little more.

One morning, walking out of the bathroom, a ranger told him to go back in until a bear left the area. "I'm going to hide in the bathroom?" he asked. "It's ridiculous."

Allen Gilbert of Los Angeles stumbled on the web cams last year, and that heightened his interest in visitingKatmai, a place the world traveler had targeted many years ago to visit. After he booked the trip for his family, including his wife and two daughters, he returned to the website to scout out potential places to photograph the bears.

"I didn't have any expectations that we would be literally within feet of the brown bears and I would be able to get full-frame photos of their heads," he said.

The bears' cameras are just some of the 50 high definition wildlife cams operated worldwide by explore.org, including osprey and puffin cams in Maine, and bison and polar bear cams from Canada. More than 5 million hours of content were streamed over a 30-day period last year.

The cams are monitored and operated remotely by people, including many volunteers working from their laptops across the world.

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