Ghostly shot of rare hyena in abandoned mining town wins Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2025 - Natural History Museum

South African wildlife photographer Wim van den Heever has been announced as Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2025 for his powerful image, ‘Ghost Town Visitor’. The competition’s Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2025 was announced as Andrea Dominizi, aged 17.

Selected from a record-breaking 60,636 entries from 113 countries and territories, the category and overall winners of the world’s leading wildlife photography competition, Wildlife Photographer of the Year, run by the Natural History Museum, London, were revealed at an awards ceremony this evening (14 October 2025).

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2025

South African wildlife photographer Wim van den Heever has been announced as Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2025 for his powerful image, ‘Ghost Town Visitor’.

Highlighting how nature interacts with urban spaces in often unusual ways, Wim's photograph is a haunting yet mesmerising view of a brown hyena visiting the skeletal remains of a long-abandoned diamond mining town in Kolmanskop, Namibia. Testament to the photographer’s determination and patience, using camera trap technology, it took Wim a decade to get this single shot of a brown hyena after first noticing their tracks at the site.

The rarest hyena species in the world, brown hyenas are nocturnal and mostly solitary. They are known to pass through Kolmanskop on their way to hunt Cape fur seal pups or scavenge for carrion washed ashore along the Namib Desert coast. Brown hyenas are rarely seen, so camera trap technology is an effective way for scientists to monitor behaviour and better understand the species.