Gutoski is an accident and emergency physician from London, Ontario.
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The image showed an incident that occurred in Wapusk National Park, where red foxes don’t usually hunt arctic foxes, but when their hunting ranges overlap, conflict is bound to happen, reported The Guardian. For three hours in temperatures of -30 degrees Centigrade Don stayed at the scene, until the red fox, finally sated, picked up the eviscerated carcass and dragged it away to store for later.
Award-winning photos are chosen for their artistic composition, technical innovation and truthful interpretation of the natural world, according to the Natural History Museum.
Hailed as “a attractive but haunting portrait of the struggle for life in the subarctic climes”, the photo will be the centerpiece of an exhibition that begins Friday at the museum.
“As it gets warmer in the Arctic and subArctic and the red fox can move further north into the territory occupied by the Arctic fox, you are going to get increasingly these kinds of tensions”, she said. The photo, entitled A Tale of Two Foxes, depicts a red fox with a dead Arctic fox in its grasp.
According to Kathy Moran, the senior editor for natural history projects at National Geographic, “The immediate impact of this photograph is that it appears as if the red fox is slipping out of its winter coat”.
The caption in the image stated that red foxes are competitors for small prey and predators of Arctic foxes. “It is graphic, it captures behaviour and it is one of the strongest single storytelling photographs I have seen”.
Gutoski’s striking photo beat out 42,000 other entries from 96 countries.
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The finalists of the annual photography competition run by the Natural History Museum London were announced Tuesday evening.
