The Moment

Here’s the photo from photographer Yongqing Bao that won the honor of Wildlife Photographer of the Year several years ago.

The image is aptly titled “The Moment” and captures a fight between a Tibetan fox and a marmot on China’s Tibetan Plateau.

The “extraordinary” image captures the moment of the female Tibetan fox hunting to keep her three cubs alive. It engaged in a battle for survival with the large squirrel.

“Photographically, it is quite simply the perfect moment. The expressive intensity of the postures holds you transfixed, and the thread of energy between the raised paws seems to hold the protagonists in perfect balance,” Roz Kidman Cox, the chair of the judging panel, said.

“Images from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are rare enough, but to have captured such a powerful interaction between a Tibetan fox and a marmot – two species key to the ecology of this high-grassland region – is extraordinary,” he added.