Amuse by the winners of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition

A Siberian tiger showed the love we need in 2020. Photographer Sergey Gorshkov captured a RARE moment of a tigress hugging a tree as if she’s marking her territory. Titled as “The Embrace,” the picture just made Gorshkov the winner of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition.

“A SCENE LIKE NO OTHER”

In the picture, the tigress stands on her hind legs, wrapping her front legs around a Manchurian fir tree and rubbing her cheek against bark to leave secretions from her scent glands. The big cat is at great peace as it lovingly wraps its body around the tree.

“It’s a scene like no other, a unique glimpse of an intimate moment deep in a magical forest,” said Roz Kidman Cox, chair of the judging panel. “Shafts of low winter sun highlight the ancient fir tree and the coat of the huge tigress as she grips the trunk in obvious ecstasy and inhales the scent of tiger on resin, leaving her own mark as her message.”

This picture was selected among the 49,000 entries in the prestigious annual photography competition held by the Natural History Museum in London.

“It’s also a story told in glorious color and texture of the comeback of the Amur tiger, a symbol of the Russian wilderness,” Cox said.

Siberian tigers or Amur tigers have an epic comeback story after their threatening extinction in the late 1940s. By that time, there were only 20 to 30 tigers left alone in the wild because of excessive hunting across the Russian Far East, northeastern China, and the Korean Peninsula.

Russia was the first country that recognized its potential extinction and gave them legal protection in 1997. Now, around 550 tigers are roaming around in their old territories.

The person behind this epic moment, Gorshkov, is a founding member of the Russian Union of Wildlife Photographers. He captured this photo in Russia’s Land of the Leopard National Park. He installed a motion-sensor camera and waited for over 11 months to capture his prize-winning still!

The Serbian Tigress was chosen amongst other pretty cute competitors who were caught in a moment of calmness.