Move over, Fat Bear Week. Fat Marmot Week is here — and more UCLA media

The Associated Press reported on a UCLA-led effort to raise funds for a project surveying marmots in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, where the population declined by two-thirds during last year’s hibernation due to insufficient snow cover. Like Fat Bear Week, Fat Marmot Week is mostly for fun, but it also has a serious side: Scientists need to drum up donations to sustain their long-running research into the rodents amid federal funding cuts. “In some sense, we’re going to be laughing our way down as the Titanic sinks,” said Dan Blumstein, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA and co-director of the Rocky Mountain Biological Labo…