{"id":213757,"date":"2025-10-15T02:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T02:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/213757\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T02:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T02:19:10","slug":"wildlife-photographer-of-the-year-ghostly-shot-of-hyena-wins-top-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/213757\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildlife Photographer of the Year: Ghostly shot of hyena wins top award"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n An image of a rare hyena standing in front of an abandoned building in a former diamond mining town in Namibia has won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year<\/a> 2025 award.\n <\/p>\n

\n Shot by South African photographer Wim van den Heever in the town of Kolmanskop, \u201cGhost Town Visitor\u201d is the product of 10 years\u2019 work using camera trap technology, according to a statement from the organizers on Tuesday.\n <\/p>\n

\n The photograph, which was one of 60,636 entries, shows a brown hyena \u2013 a member of the rarest hyena species in the world.\n <\/p>\n

\n Nocturnal and largely solitary, brown hyenas are rarely seen, so van den Heever started to use a camera trap after noticing their tracks in the area.\n <\/p>\n

\n Kathy Moran, chair of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year<\/a> jury, said that the image showed how wildlife had repopulated a town abandoned by humans.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cHow fitting that this photograph was made in a ghost town,\u201d she said in the statement.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cYou get a prickly feeling just looking at this image and you know that you\u2019re in this hyena\u2019s realm.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Jury member Akanksha Sood Singh added that the \u201cimage is an eerie juxtaposition of the wild reclaiming human civilisation.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe image is haunting yet mesmerising because the solitary hyena takes centre stage as a symbol of resilience amid the decay,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Italian photographer Andrea Dominizi won the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2025, for entrants aged 17 and under, with his image of a longhorn beetle that appears to be surveying abandoned logging machinery.\n <\/p>\n

\n Named \u201cAfter the Destruction,\u201d Dominizi took the photograph in the Lepini Mountains in central Italy, which were once a source of old beech trees.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cA compelling, but harrowing photograph, it\u2019s one that encourages the viewer to contemplate the nature of this fraught relationship,\u201d said jury member Andy Parkinson of Dominizi\u2019s picture.\n <\/p>\n

\n The award organizers also highlighted the Impact Award, which was won by Brazilian photographer Fernando Faciole for his image of an orphaned giant anteater pup following a human caregiver.\n <\/p>\n

\n In addition, the jury selected 19 category winners. These images will feature in an exhibition that will open at the Natural History Museum in London on Friday.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cNow in its sixty-first year, we are thrilled to continue Wildlife Photographer of the Year as a powerful platform for visual storytelling, showing the diversity, beauty and complexity of the natural world and humanity\u2019s relationship to it,\u201d said museum director Doug Gurr in the statement.\n <\/p>\n

\n EDITOR\u2019S NOTE:\u00a0 Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex\u2019s Perpetual Planet Initiative<\/a> has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An image of a rare hyena standing in front of an abandoned building in a former diamond mining…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213758,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-213757","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}