A rare glimpse of a brown hyena wandering through the ruins of an abandoned Namibian diamond mining town has claimed the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year award for 2025. Captured by South African photographer Wim van den Heever in Kolmanskop, the shot titled "Ghost Town Visitor" was the result of a decade's effort using camera traps, per CNN. Because brown hyenas, the rarest hyena species, are nocturnal and notoriously elusive, van den Heever resorted to deploying remote cameras after spotting their tracks in the deserted landscape. His persistence paid off, with the winning image chosen from more than 60,000 entries.
Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London. Competition jury chair Kathy Moran said "you get a prickly feeling" from the photo, which captures the way wildlife can reclaim spaces abandoned by people. "You know that you're in this hyena's realm," she said of the image. Jury member Akanksha Sood Singh called the photo "haunting yet mesmerizing"—"an eerie juxtaposition of the wild reclaiming human civilization," with the hyena serving "as a symbol of resilience amid the decay."
The top prize in the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year category went to Italian teenager Andrea Dominizi, who photographed a longhorn beetle atop abandoned logging machinery in Italy's Lepini Mountains—"a compelling, but harrowing photograph," according to jury member Andy Parkinson. Brazilian photographer Fernando Faciole secured the Impact Award for his photograph of an orphaned giant anteater pup following a human caregiver, highlighting the complexities of interspecies bonds. In total, 19 category winners were selected, and their images will be displayed in an exhibition opening Friday at the Natural History Museum. You can also see them here.