The story behind the award-winning photo of an elusive brown hyena bringing new life to the Namib Desert.
The brown hyena is the rarest species of hyena in the world.
Van den Heever runs nature photography tours around the world and returns to the Namib Desert once a year.
The abandoned mining towns, too, provide the opportunistic brown hyena with respite from the heat in the exposed, treeless landscape.
When reflecting on the 10 years he spent working to get his award-winning shot, Van den Heever laughs.
The tale of the elusive brown hyena that brought new life to the Namib Desert and was featured in the award-winning photograph.
At night, Kolmanskop, a long-abandoned diamond mining town, is nearly deserted. The tourists have all returned to their lodgings for the night after visiting this early 20th-century community close to Namibia’s Atlantic Coast for its sand-filled buildings. Nonetheless, there is still some activity in the empty streets. A lone brown hyena lurks in the shadows between the darkly destroyed buildings and the partially sand-filled alleyways.
The scene is brightly illuminated by a flash, which is the result of ten years of work for South African wildlife photographer Wim van den Heever.
At the Natural History Museum in London’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition this year, the photograph took home the grand prize. In addition to its composition, the image’s subject makes it intriguing. The world’s rarest hyena species is the brown hyena. It has also taken up residence in Namibia’s deserted diamond towns, demonstrating its extraordinary adaptability and opportunism. The competition’s other winners are listed here. ).
Every year, Van den Heever takes nature photography tours around the globe and makes a trip back to the Namib Desert. He was certain that a brown hyena was prowling the ghost town at night during his first visits. He claims that “I would see either droppings or tracks of a hyena in the area.”. His first thought was to take pictures of the hyena in the eerie ghost town.
After experimenting with a few different strategies, Van den Heever decided to return to Kolmanskop between 2:00 and 03:00 in order to set up his camera trap when the town was completely deserted. But it was very challenging to get the picture. The shy brown hyena is most active at night. For many years, Van den Heever would only see one in the distance, usually running away from the town.
To that was added the harshness of the Namib Desert. Sands from Easterly winds would accumulate against his photography equipment at night, up to a meter (3.33 feet) high. “Camers just got absolutely trashed,” he says of one or two of his years. Thick banks of fog were brought in by a westerly wind coming in from the sea. Then, because the fog is simply too dense, you won’t be able to see the hyena in your photo. “.
The final concern was the location of the camera trap. As a hyena wandered through the deserted town, Van den Heever pictured the path it might take. Van den Heever states, “I always had in my mind that if something is going to walk from this direction to this direction, it’ll have to come through this plane.”. And I can get the house there and the hyena here if I can time it right. And that’s essentially how I set up the cameras and chose the composition. “..”.
It was just a matter of waiting after that. Van den Heever’s camera traps caught a few jackals that were facing the wrong way during his ten years of visits to Kolmanskop, but no brown hyena.
Afterwards, on a night when everything was perfect, the hyena walked in the exact spot Van den Heever had predicted. That evening, three triggers went off on my camera. Once, I tested the scene. Nothing occurred on the second occasion, and a hyena appeared in the photo on the third. “.”.
When he first saw the picture on the back of the camera, he says he was on the verge of tears. “It’s precisely how I had envisioned the image,” he states. “It is precisely what I was searching for from the beginning. That is the reason I tried to do it and put in all the work and seasons. “.
The brown hyena is the rarest hyena in the world, with an estimated 4,370 to 10,110 remaining in southern Africa. Marie Lemerle, who oversees the Brown Hyena Research Project, which is situated in the town of Lüderitz, approximately 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) from Kolmanskop, says that although the species is classified as “near threatened,” its numbers are believed to be roughly stable.
Lemerle describes them as “a very elusive species.”. People probably don’t expect them to be in many of these locations. They’re a quiet animal, too. The brown spotted hyena is not nearly as vocal as the more well-known spotted hyena, which has a unique call that can be heard over great distances. Lemerle asserts, “You might not even hear them if they walk past your tent.”. “The tracks will only be visible the following morning. “..”.
The national park that contains Kolmanskop and Lüderitz is roughly the size of New Jersey and was closed to the public in 1908 because of diamond mining. According to Lemerle, the park is still “one of these rare places in the world where it’s almost a pristine area,” even though entry is less strictly regulated now.
The brown hyena is the top predator in this region, primarily consuming seal pups along the shore. According to Lemerle, they are essential in providing food in the arid, nutrient-poor environment. The opportunistic brown hyena finds relief from the heat in the exposed, treeless terrain from the abandoned mining towns as well. She asserts that “the hyenas definitely like to use these old buildings for shelter.”.
In the basement of a run-down old building, a hyena recently gave birth to a cub in another abandoned mining town about 30 kilometers (20 miles) away. According to Lemerle, “she used one of these pipes to give birth… there was an old kitchen, there was a big old oven at the bottom with some pipes going into the walls.”. In reality, she continues to use ancient pipes and man-made features as a den. “.”.
According to Lemerle, roadkill is one of the primary causes of mortality for brown hyenas, and new construction and roads pose a serious threat to the species, even though these ancient settlements can be beneficial. Since farmers occasionally view these scavengers as pests, conflict with people is another cause of death outside of parks.
According to Lemerle, “Hyenas in general have a bad reputation,”. Even though brown hyenas typically don’t hunt very well. “,”.
Even though they are occasionally viewed as “ugly, stinky animals” that only bother people, Lemerle claims that this perception is unjustified. In fact, as scavengers, they are crucial to the ecosystem because they rid it of disease and decaying carcasses. More about the many advantages of scavengers can be found here. ().
As a zoologist at the Natural History Museum, Natalie Cooper hopes that pictures like Van Den Heever’s could help alter how people view the species. We must cooperate to coexist with wildlife because we are all a part of the same ecosystem, as the picture serves as a reminder. “.”.
In a broader sense, she says, photography can fill in gaps in our knowledge of the natural world. Many people find it difficult to comprehend the true implications of the stark decline in global biodiversity caused by human activity. “I think photographs can really help with making people think,” Cooper says.
Van den Heever chuckles as he considers the decade he spent honing his award-winning shot. “I’m embarrassed by the amount of work I put into the picture; it either demonstrates my dedication or my lack of intelligence, but I’m not sure which is which. “.”.
Even though the latter option was clearly ruled out by his recent Wildlife Photographer of the Year prize, Van den Heever claims he isn’t quite done with this subject or this setting.
Nothing is ever too much to add. There could have been two hyenas, the hyena might have been jumping through the photo, it might have been winking at you, or it might have had a seal pup in its mouth. “Therefore, we always return and try to do something different,” Van den Heever says. “A photographer is never satisfied. “.
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