Move over bears. Fat Marmot Week puts a spotlight on the alpine rodents

Two-thirds of one marmot population in the Colorado mountains died hibernating last winter for want of snow cover. The survivors have fattened up in time for the first Fat Marmot Week, an online vote starting Monday modelled on Fat Bear Week, raising money for a study of the rodents that has run at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic since 1962 and is now threatened by federal funding cuts.

The contest is largely for fun. The die-off it follows was real, and the long-running study behind it is still short of money.