Russian photographer Sergey Gorshkov has claimed the top prize in this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition with his photo of an Amur tiger, the British Natural History Museum announced Wednesday.
Gorshkov’s winning photo titled “The Embrace” shows an Amur tigress scent-marking an ancient fir tree in the Land of the Leopard National Park in Russia’s Far East. It beat out 49,000 other photos that were submitted to this year’s competition.
“It’s a scene like no other, a unique glimpse of an intimate moment deep in a magical forest,” the chair of the judging panel Roz Kidman Cox told the Natural History Museum.
Amur tigers, also called Siberian tigers, are the world’s largest tiger subspecies and are native to the Russian Far East, northeastern China and North Korea. Once hunted for their exquisite fur, the tigers are now under threat of extinction. Only about 500 of these big cats live in eastern Russia today, making the photograph a particularly unique catch.
Gorshkov was able to take the photograph with the help of park rangers, who guided him to a tree marked with tiger hair, odor and claw marks. He left his camera equipped with motion-sensor equipment near the tree for several months. The rangers later identified the animal as tigress number T41F by her unique stripe pattern.
Gorshkov is a world-renowned wildlife photographer from Siberia and a founder of the Russian Union of Wildlife Photographers.
More images from this year’s Wildlife Photographer awards can be found here.
Russian MP Opens Slaughterhouse to Send Animals to a ‘Brighter Future’
A Russian MP has heralded the opening of a new meat slaughterhouse in his region with an Orthodox service and promises of a “brighter future” for its animals.
Alexander Iltyakov, a State Duma deputy from the ruling United Russia party representing the Kurgan region, presided Thursday over the slaughterhouse’s ceremonial opening which began with a Russian Orthodox blessing.
Built at a cost of 1.3 billion rubles ($17.5 million), the pork plant provides “the ideal conditions for animals to be sent off to a brighter future — as food for people,” Iltyakov was quoted by the Znak.com news website as saying.
“Get ready,” he warned journalists covering the event. “There’s going to be lots of blood.”
The new pork processing plant is operated by Veles, a company belonging to Iltyakov’s family. Founded in 1995, Veles is “one of the largest meat processors in the Urals and western Siberia,” according to the company’s website.
The new Veles slaughterhouse opens ahead of Russia’s high-stakes September parliamentary elections, where United Russia seeks to hang onto its supermajority despite historically low approval ratings.
Iltyakov, who is the secretary of United Russia’s Kurgan regional branch, last made headlines in June for an anti-LGBT TikTok video where he read a short passage from the Bible and claimed “God didn’t create pederasts and lesbians.”
He doubled down on his comments in an interview with local media, saying that he had also read the Torah and found nothing about gays.
