Haunting hyena shot was 10 years in the making

More than 60,000 images were submitted for this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, run by the Natural History Museum, writes Emily Beament

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“HAUNTING” image of a hyena in a mining ghost town that took a decade to capture has won this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest.

The shot by South African wildlife photographer Wim van den Heever scooped top spot out of a record-breaking 60,636 images submitted to the competition, which is run by the Natural History Museum, London.

The image portrays a rarely-seen brown hyena, the world’s rarest hyena species, next to a broken-down building in the long-abandoned diamond mining town of Kolmanskop, Namibia, where they are known to pass through on their way to hunt Cape seals or scavenge on the Namib Desert coast.