South African photographer Wim van den Heever has been named the 2025 Wildlife Photographer of the Year for his haunting image Ghost Town Visitor. The photo shows a rare brown hyena standing amid the skeletal remains of an abandoned diamond mining town of Kolmanskop in Namibia, shrouded in sea fog.

The competition is organised by the London-based Natural History Museum.

Judges described the image as haunting and mesmerizing, praising it for capturing the tension between decay and resilience in nature. Van den Heever said it took him a decade to capture the perfect shot after years of tracking the elusive nocturnal animal.

The Natural History Museum received more than 60 000 entries from 113 countries for this year’s competition, which celebrates its 61st anniversary. The full exhibition opens on October 17 and features 100 of the most striking photographs of the natural world.