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Ghostly shot of hyena wins Wildlife Photographer of the Year award

<i>Wim van den Heever via CNN Newsource</i><br/>With sea fog rolling in from the Atlantic Ocean

By CNN Newsource

Published October 14, 2025 5:31 pm

By Jack Guy, CNN

(CNN) — 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 2025 award.

Shot by South African photographer Wim van den Heever in the town of Kolmanskop, “Ghost Town Visitor” is the product of 10 years’ work using camera trap technology, according to a statement from the organizers on Tuesday.

The photograph, which was one of 60,636 entries, shows a brown hyena – a member of the rarest hyena species in the world.

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.

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

“How fitting that this photograph was made in a ghost town,” she said in the statement.

“You get a prickly feeling just looking at this image and you know that you’re in this hyena’s realm.”

Jury member Akanksha Sood Singh added that the “image is an eerie juxtaposition of the wild reclaiming human civilisation.”

“The image is haunting yet mesmerising because the solitary hyena takes centre stage as a symbol of resilience amid the decay,” she said.

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.

Named “After the Destruction,” Dominizi took the photograph in the Lepini Mountains in central Italy, which were once a source of old beech trees.

“A compelling, but harrowing photograph, it’s one that encourages the viewer to contemplate the nature of this fraught relationship,” said jury member Andy Parkinson of Dominizi’s picture.

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.

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.

“Now 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’s relationship to it,” said museum director Doug Gurr in the statement.