Saturday November 20, 2010
Rare photo a roaring success
PETALING JAYA: A photograph of a tigress and its offspring in a forest has beaten hundreds of entries to win the US$2,000 (RM6,200) grand prize in BBC Wildlife Magazine’s global camera-trap photography competition. The photograph of the two Malayan tigers captured in the Temengor Forest Reserve in Perak also won an additional US$1,000 (RM3,100) in the Best Animal Portrait category.
The winning photograph submitted by Rayan that awed the judges of the Global Camera-Trap Photo Competition.
“This photo of a female tiger and her offspring in the same frame is rare because the female tiger typically walks in front followed by her offspring. “As camera traps have a delay between each photo, the female tiger tends to be photo-captured first, while her offspring might be missed altogether,” said WWF-Malaysia’s tiger monitoring unit head Mark Rayan who submitted the photograph.
The photograph was taken on Sept 12 by a camera trap placed by Christopher Wong, a member of the monitoring unit. Rayan said that he had entered the competition because the photograph created quite a stir among WWF staff and local conservation partners when it was first shown around. Rayan, who is also representing WWF-Malaysia at the Youth Tiger Summit in Vladivostok this month, said winning the competition had boosted the team’s spirit in conducting research in the dense jungles of Malaysia.
“The prize money will be used to purchase satellite imagery for a habitat suitability analysis to complement our research,” he said. BBC Wildlife Magazine organised the competition in association with World Land Trust in April and received 700 entries from all over the world. It is aimed at celebrating extraordinary images of wildlife, captured through minimal disturbance to them and to their habitat.
The monitoring unit is conducting research on tigers and their prey to determine their conservation status and to provide management recommendations to ensure the long-term survival of tigers in one of Malaysia’s priority areas for tiger conservation – the Belum-Temengor forest complex. The International Tiger Forum to be hosted by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is due to take place in St Petersburg, Russia from tomorrow untill Nov 24 and will be held concurrently with the youth summit.
It seeks to bring together the 13 countries that still have wild tigers and international partners to sign a pledge on cooperation for tiger conservation. The forum will also launch a global tiger recovery programme that seeks to double the big cat’s numbers in the wild by 2022.
