Photo of tigress ‘hugging’ tree wins environment photo of the year

Image titled ‘The Embrace’ brings hope that Siberian tigers are making a comeback

Handout photo issued by the Natural History Museum of Wild and free Siberian Tiger! by Sergey Gorshkov, which has won this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. (Sergey Gorshkov/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2020/PA Wire)

A stunning photograph of a Siberian tigress embracing a fir tree has won this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.

Russian photographer Sergey Gorshkov’s winning photograph beat 49,000 entries from all over the world and scooped up the top prize in the prestigious contest.

The image, titled ‘The Embrace’, took over 11 months to capture with hidden cameras. Judges said the photograph shows a “scene like no other” and offers hope that Siberian, or Amur, tigers are making a comeback.

Rosamond Kidman Cox, chairwoman of the judging panel, said ‘The Embrace’ offered a “unique glimpse of an intimate moment” deep in a Russian forest.

“Shafts of low winter sun highlight the ancient fir tree and the coat of the huge tigress as she grips the trunk in obvious ecstasy and inhales the scent of tiger on resin, leaving her own mark as her message,” said Ms Cox, describing the image.

“It’s also a story told in glorious colour and texture of the comeback of the Amur tiger, a symbol of the Russian wilderness.”

Dr Tim Littlewood, the Natural History Museum’s executive director of science and a member of the judging panel, said: “Hunted to the verge of extinction in the past century, the Amur population is still threatened by poaching and logging today.

“The remarkable sight of the tigress immerse in her natural environment offers us hope, as recent reports suggest numbers are growing from dedicated conservation efforts.

“Through the unique emotive power of photography, we are reminded of the beauty of the natural world and our shared responsibility to protect it,” he added.

Other winners include 13-year-old Liina Heikkinen, who won the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year title with a photograph she took while on holiday in Helsinki, Finland, of fox cub trying to eat a barnacle goose in a rock crevice while keeping its hungry siblings at bay.

Winning images in different categories include a profile shot of a young male proboscis monkey, a rare picture of Pallas’s cats taken in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and a polar bear in a circus.

Photos of a biologist watching a Cordilleran flycatcher build a nest outside his window, a tiny diamondback squid paralarva in the darkness, and two wasps from different species entering neighbourhood nests also won category prizes.

The winners were announced by the Duchess of Cambridge on Tuesday night, during an online awards ceremony streamed from the Natural History Museum in London. An exhibition of the images will go on display in the museum.

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London, where the exhibition will open on Friday 16 October. The exhibition will then tour across the UK and internationally to venues in countries including Australia, Canada, Denmark and Germany.

The museum will only allow a limited number of visitors and Covid-safe measures will be put in place to ensure visitors have a “safe and welcoming experience” and are able to view the photographs in a crowd-free gallery.