A striking picture of the battle between a Tibetan fox and a marmot in a remote mountainous region of China has won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.
The winning images for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2019 were announced on 15 October in the Hintze Hall at the Natural History Museum, with the overall winner awarded to Yongqing Bao from China for his image, The Moment.
His photograph was also the joint winner in the Behaviour: Mammals category.
“Photographically, it is quite simply the perfect moment,” says Roz Kidman Cox, the chair of the judging panel, and a former editor of BBC Wildlife Magazine. “The expressive intensity of the postures holds you transfixed, and the thread of energy between the raised paws seems to hold the protagonists in perfect balance. Images from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are rare enough, but to have captured such a powerful interaction between a Tibetan fox and a marmot – two species key to the ecology of this high-grassland region – is extraordinary.”
