And the Winner Is . . . .

“That’s nature.”

— Yongqing Bao, Wildlife Photographer of the Year for 2019

In the end, a striking image of an eventual fight-to-the-death between a fox and a marmot earned mainland-Chinese photographer Yongqing Bao the top prize at the 55th annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards.

The image, like many great photographs, is not entirely what it seems at first glance. It looks as if it might be the subject of a funny caption competition, but as it happened it tells a deadly serious story. The marmot would end up fighting for its life, and it would lose. “That’s nature,” Yongqing said simply, in accepting his award at a black-tie ceremony Tuesday at London’s historic Natural History Museum.

That’s a frozen-in-time moment of life and death and survival of the fittest, where natural selection has determined that there will always be two types of animals in nature: predator and prey. One must die so that the other can survive.

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards are unique in that there are several categories of equal standing; the winner in each category then goes into a pool from which the title Photographer of the year is chosen. Yongqing — in the traditional Chinese, a person’s surname comes first, before the Western first name — also won the category of mammal behaviour.

The award also marks the first time a photographer from mainland Chinese photographer has earned wildlife photography’s top prize. It comes mere weeks after a Chinese-language edition of the harrowing, award-winning coffee-table book Photographers Against Wildlife Crime was published in the UK, a fact lauded by the book’s co-editor, photojournalist Keith Wilson early Wednesday morning. Wilson and co-editor Britta Jaschinski decided to print a Chinese-language edition of their powerful, emotionally wrenching book — first published to widespread critical acclaim a year ago — because the message of nature conservation is critical if the world’s 

endangered species are to survive the looming Sixth Mass Extinction. Bestowing such a prestigious title, the most prestigious in the competitive field of nature photographer, is also a rallying cry for conservation photographers in the world’s most populous country, with the fastest growing economy,

Yongqing’s day job is director and chief ecological photographer of China’s Qilian Mountain Nature Conservation Association. Yongqing is also a member of China’s Qinghai Photographers Association and deputy secretary-general of the Qinghai Wildlife Photographers Association.

Yongqing captured his image of a Himalayan marmot in the very same Qilian mountains, moments after it emerged from hibernation from its winter den and encountered a Tibetan fox with three hungry cubs to feed. The Himalayan fox is one of the world’s highest-altitude dwelling mammals. It relies on its thick fur to survive the extreme cold of Himalayan winter. During the peak of winter, it sleeps for nearly six months burrowed deep in the ground with the rest of its colony, seeking comfort in numbers. Every spring, the marmots emerge from their burrows, where predators lie in wait — not unlike lions and hyenas during the annual wildebeest birthing season every February in Tanzania’s Lake Ndutu region, on the edge of Serengeti National Park.

Life in the high Himalayas where mainland China meets Tibet is harsh and unforgiving, as captured in Yongqing’s image. Yongqing staked out a snow-covered alpine meadow for several hours on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to capture the moment. After hours of waiting, the action happened in a flash: The fox had hunkered down in the ice, hoping to catch a marmot unawares.

An exhibition of the winners’ work in all categories will be on display at the Natural History Museum from Friday, Oct. 18 to May 31 of next year.

©Wildlife Photographer of the Year - Natural History Museum

Here’s a video link to the full two-hour awards ceremony — a night at the museum, if you will.

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A Comeback for One of Africa’s Oldest, Least Known National Parks

“With peace restored to the region, something miraculous happened. Elephants were able to be elephants once again, and for the first time in years, they began to breed and raise their young. In early 2018, we counted 103 calves under the age of three. In 2011, we counted just one.”

— African Parks

Zakouma National Park is a 1,158 square mile (3,000 km²) national park in southeastern Chad, straddling the semi-arid, scrub-brush flatlands that separate the ever-growing Sahara Desert from the lush, increasingly threatened rainforests to the south. It is a part of Africa where, until recently, it was said a loaf of bread cost more than an AK-47, ground zero in a religious bush war that pitted elephant poachers and Jangaweed militias against local villagers, where, in 2007, militias attacked the park headquarters for its 1.5 ton stockpile of ivory, in the form of elephant tusks, and killed several park rangers.

The government of Chad, itself reeling from years of war and instability along its long, sprawling border with Sudan, forged an agreement with the NGO African Parks in 2010 to help manage the park and protect its wildlife, an anti-poaching operation that involved equipping 60 rangers with GPS tracking units and reliable radios.

Zakouma is unique in that it is vast, rugged and home to one of the world’s largest and least known elephant migrations, and now, according to both African Parks and outside monitors, it is in recovery. A military rapid response team, dubbed the Mambas,” after the deadly, fast-striking snake, has thrown down the gauntlet to heavily armed poachers, many of them unused to the idea that park rangers can now shoot back, with often deadly efficiency.

Zakouma and the nation of Chad marked the park’s 50th anniversary in 2014 with a ceremony attended by President Idriss Déby, in which a one-ton pyre of elephant tusks was set ablaze to send a message to the outside world that Chad’s elephants are no longer fair game.

Zakouma first came to attention to North American TV viewers when 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley devoted an entire segment, “The Ivory War,” in 2007, to  some of the largest elephant herds rarely seen by western eyes, before a massive TV audience that had just watched a November Sunday afternoon National Football League game.

Pelley flew with National Geographic photographer Mike Fay by helicopter over some of the most stunning nature scenes Africa has to offer, and the future looked uncertain for a park — and an elephant population — surrounded by famine, war and pestilence.

That was then, this is now.

Zakouma’s resurgence has emerged as a rare success story, a case study in nature’s healing ability and proof that, with adequate funding, committed leadership and political stability, wildlife conservation is possible, even in some of the poorest corners of the globe.

Much of the credit belongs to the Johannesburg-based NGO African Parks, an international non-profit founded in 2000 and best known for resurrecting Mozambique’s Gorongosa National

Park, among others, after decades of civil war.

Today the organization’s portfolio includes 15 protected areas in nine African countries, with an estimated yearly budget of USD $72.5 million.

The key to success, African Parks’ directors believe, is to enlist local and indigenous people in nurturing and protecting biodiversity in the places where they live, in a way that benefits surrounding communities.

Revitalized national parks don’t just create jobs: They help heal the wounds of war. 

“We all know the origin story of national parks in Africa,” ardent conservationist and philanthropist and Greg Carr told writer Patrick Adams, for an op-ed piece in the New York Times this past February.

“They were created by colonial regimes and they were essentially fortresses: open to white, Western tourists but closed to the people whose natural heritage they were meant to protect.”

People often ask him what should be done to protect African wildlife, Carr added.

“And, every time, I say, ‘Girls in school.’ It’s the No. 1 thing we will do for this planet.”

Zakouma, it turns out, is one of wild Africaʼs most remarkable transformation stories. Between 2002 to 2010, 95% of the parksʼ elephants were poached – almost 4,000 were slaughtered for their ivory, and poachers would often take out entire family units at the same time. Not only were they destroying the park’s wildlife, they were ruining the lives of local people who lived in the area.

African Parks’ website recalls what happened next.

“Our first step was to overhaul law enforcement, but it wasnʼt for the faint of heart. 

“In 2012, six of our rangers were gunned down execution-style during their morning prayers. But our rangers, with their indomitable spirits, didnʼt give up. Because of their efforts and effective community work, only 24 known elephants have been lost to poaching since 2010. Along with providing law enforcement, we built ‘Elephant Schoolsʼ for local communities, providing desks, blackboards and teachersʼ salaries, helping more than 1,500 children get an education. 

“People were employed to help manage the park, making Zakouma one of the largest employers in the region. With law enforced and security reclaimed, tourists began to visit, delivering needed revenue back to the park and local communities.”

And now, Zakouma’s elephant population is on the rise for the first time in a decade. Reason for hope.

https://www.africanparks.org

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-ivory-war/

©Michael Viljoen/African Parks

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Extinction Rebellion and Unpredictable Outcomes

“Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to dramatize the issue so that it can no longer be ignored.”

— Martin Luther King

Climate activists covered in fake blood staged a die-in this week at Wall Street’s famous charging bull statue. They were part of the week’s global #ExtinctionRebellion resistance protests demanding immediate action on climate change. The dye was cast.

True, the very name Extinction Rebellion sounds like an anachronism. If extinction is real — and few doubt that it is, given our present climate emergency and growing talk of a looming Sixth Mass Extinction — rebellion seems pointless.

Even now, though, there are those who refuse to believe, let alone take decisive action. The climate-denying group Climate Realists, for one. The human mind is capable of many things, and denial in the face of overwhelming evidence is one of them. Big Oil has much to lose if the industrialized world switches to green energy, and there’s evidence to suggest that Big Oil is spending big money to tar climate activists with the brush of extremism — snowflakes with radical ideas and a penchant for disruption and violence.

Where many might view this week’s Extinction protests as a legitimate expression of public concern, well-intended and backed up by the science, there are still those who insist recent climate events are part of a natural cycle that human actions have little or nothing to do with. Where you and I see people of conscience, they see anarchists — anarchists who would take down Big Oil, and take the global economy with it.

In the early moments of Monday’s first day of global protests, 30 climate activists were charged after hundreds blocked a road in Sydney, Australia; 100 more were arrested in Amsterdam.

Demonstrations took place in more than a dozen countries, including Spain, the UK, France, Austria, Germany, the United States, Canada and New Zealand. Nearly 150 people were arrested in London

More protests are expected in some 65 cities over the next two weeks. The protestors are demanding that governments take immediate, drastic action to address climate change. 

The activists argue that petitions, lobbying and marches no longer work. More needs to be none, and direct action taken if necessary.

That doesn’t necessarily mean violence — taking direct action by means of violence, though some activists do see it that way. Martin Luther King viewed direct action in non-violent terms, arguing than nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people; that seeks to defeat injustice, not people; that believes suffering can educate and transform; and that believe the universe is on the side of justice.

Not everyone sees it that way, of course. According to BBC News, Australia’s minister for  home affairs, Peter Dutton, said the names and photos of Extinction Rebellion protesters should be “widely distributed” to “shame” them, not understanding that protesters, far from being shamed, would welcome the chance to sign their name to the protest movement. (Australia, one of the industrialized world’s most unapologetic consumers and distributors of coal, currently has one of the most aggressively conservative, recalcitrant governments on the planet, a political fact which seemingly conflicts with the evidence of terrible droughts and catastrophic bush fires, not to mention record high temperatures in all seasons, even the southern winter.)

As it is, the protesters have thrust the issue of climate activism to the top of the public debate: Climate change is now rated one of the five most important issues facing voters in industrialized democracies today, on an equal footing with the economy. Blockades of busy streets in major cities have been met with a surprising amount of support, though not so surprising perhaps to those who fervently believe in the cause.

As Leo Barasi, author of The Climate Majority: Apathy and Action in an Age of Nationalism, wrote this past weekend in an op-ed piece in the Guardian, Extinction Rebellion has won the first battle — now it must win the war.

The protesters, he concluded, might just be the people to do it.

©Extinction Rebellion/AJ+

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Beauty and the Beasts: Wildlife Photographer of the Year Finalists

“When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.”

— Ansel Adams

The 2019 Wildlife Photographer of the Year will be named little more than a week from now, and only one thing is certain: My favourite image is unlikely to be the same as yours. Your truth is not the same as mine.

That’s the nature of the beast with any photo competition, of course, but especially one with as many subjective talking points as a nature competition during our current climate crisis. The Sixth Mass Extinction looms, and we don’t need a 16-year-old climate activist from Sweden to tell us that.

Most of us, anyway. (The self-styled contrarians behind the cynically named climate-denying group “Climate Realists” are beyond hope in that regard: Big Oil has deep pockets, and is unafraid to spend large sums of cash to muddy the waters, even as they accuse climate activists of doing the same: harpooning gullible donors, as though saving the planet were just another fund-raising activity. Obscene profits have a way of warping moral perspective.)

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards have been no stranger to controversy in recent years. South African photojournalist Brent Stirton’s grim image of a rhino slaughtered for its horn, 2017’s winner, set off a storm of debate about what the award should be — something that upsets and angers, and galvanizes us to action, or something warm and heartfelt, that inspires more than shocks. The slaughtered rhino image was followed last year by a more safe, traditional choice, Dutch photographer Marsel van Oosten’s somewhat routine image of a pair of rare, critically endangered golden snub-nosed monkeys in southwestern China’s Qinling Mountains. At least one wildlife photographer I know — a former judge in the competition — groused privately about the use of flash to capture the winning image; a true wildlife photo, this photographer believes, should be completely natural.

The competition is in its 55th year. This is no fly-by-night affair.  The WPOTY award is arguably the most prestigious honour in the field — the Nobel Prize of nature photography — and is not to be taken lightly. This year’s field included some 55,000 submissions from more than 100 countries. Awards in all categories will be announced Oct. 15, with the winners — and those who were shortlisted — invited to the annual black-tie dinner at London’s Natural History Museum. An exhibition  opens Oct. 18 and will run at the NHM through the new year.

The shortlisted finalists were revealed last month. I’ve included a half-dozen or so images here that caught my eye, though I couldn’t tell you, if pressed, which is my favourite. My personal bias leans towards photojournalism, and so if I had to choose, it would be veteran Thomas Peschak’s underwater image of a whale looking at a human that appears to be reaching out under the water.

Any one of these would make a worthy winner, in my estimation, but — speaking for myself, personally, I saved the best for last.

Highly Commended, Black and White

© Alex Mustard. Shoal of bigeye trevally, Ras Mohammad National Park, Sinai Peninsular, Egypt

Highly Commended, Black and White

© Ralf Schneider. Weddell seal, Larsen Harbour, South Georgia

Highly Commended, Urban Wildlife

© Jason Bantle. Racoon and abandoned Ford Pinto, Saskatchewan, Canada

Highly Commended, Plants and Fungi

© Michel Roggo. Eurasian watermilfoil, Lake Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Highly Commended, Behaviour: Mammals

© Adrian Hirschi Dead baby hippo in hippo’s jaws, Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe

Highly Commended, Behaviour: Mammals

© Peter Haygarth. Cheetah fends off wild dogs, Zimanga Private Game Reserve, South Africa

Highly Commended, Young Photographers: 11-14 years old

©Carlos Perez Naval. Brown-throated three-toed sloth, Panama’s Soberanía National Park

Highly Commended, Wildlife Photojournalism

© Matthew Ware. Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle, Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge, Alabama

Highly Commended, Wildlife Photojournalism

© Thomas P. Peschak. Grey whale, San Ignacio Lagoon, Baja, Mexico

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MOSAiC Expedition to Unlock Secrets of Arctic Sea Ice

“We want to better understand the process and energy flow between the ocean, ice and the atmosphere, and how they change over the course of the seasons.”

— Christian Haas, oceanographer and polar researcher

In 1845 Royal Navy officer and experienced Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin departed England with two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, on an expedition to traverse the last unnavigated section of the Northwest Passage in what is today the territory of Nunavut. The expedition — both ships, captain and crew — were never seen again. Erebus and Terror were  trapped in rapidly advancing sea ice and that, as they say, was that.

This Tuesday, an expedition aboard the German research icebreaker Polarstern — “Polar Star” — will weigh anchor off the ice floes of the Laptev Sea, with the specific purpose of spending a year trapped in Arctic ice. The world has changed; the polar ice caps are melting; and geolocation satellite technology has advanced to the point where the Polarstern will not only not become lost but will be monitored — not meaning to mix metaphors — every step of the way, not just by other scientists but by landlubbers and layabouts everywhere, thanks to social media.

The expedition is named MOSaiC, for the Multidisciplinary Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate. The idea is not to be trapped so much as become wedged in sea ice that, despite its appearance to the naked eye, is not stationary but rather constantly moving. The expedition will not be trapped in place so much as drifting, wedged between slowly moving sheets of ice.

The onboard scientists — and those watching from the outside world — hope to get a better sense of how the Arctic currents tug and pull the constantly shapeshifting sea ice. With Arctic ice in constant retreat, what they discover will help us better understand the effects of climate change, while we can.

The European Space Agency (the expedition owes as much to satellites in orbit as it does human navigators on the ground) has described the project as, “the biggest shipborne polar expedition of all time.”

That may not be entirely true — we live in the age of hyperbole, after all — but this is no safe ’n easy

ocean cruise. Roughly 100 people will live and work aboard the icebreaker, and on the sea ice itself, through the polar winter, in 24-hour darkness, sudden, unpredictable storms and temperatures that may drop as low as -50° F/C.

The expedition is being spearheaded by the Alfred Wegener Institute of the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, based in Bremerhaven, Germany. Wegener, for those not in the know, was an early 20th century polar researcher, geophysicist and meteorologist known primarily for his research into the continental drift, and is considered one of the leading early pioneers of polar research. He was born 35 years after the Franklin Expedition vanished into the cold, wintry air, so it seems only logical that a lifelong polar researcher would become consumed by what happened, when, how and why.

Tânia Casal, a science campaign coordinator with the European Space Agency, told reporters the MOSAiC expedition will provide a unique opportunity to further our understanding of how ocean ice and snow interacts with the atmosphere.

“This will contribute to a more accurate modelling of future Arctic climate scenarios,” she explained.

The five-year period from 2014 to 2019 has been the warmest five-year period in recorded history. Rising sea levels have accelerated significantly during this period, even as carbon dioxide emissions reach new highs. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average, and has already outstripped projections.

Though climate deniers may not care to hear this, the Earth’s climate works as an interconnected system, not in isolation. The ripple effects of rapid warming are being felt across the planet, not just in the polar regions.

The world is wrong side up: It needs to be turned upside down in order to be right side up. Only time will tell if there’s enough time to right recent wrong. The MOSAiC expedition may seem like a tiny step,

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