Each year, an international panel of visual luminaries gathers at World Press Photo in
Amsterdam to judge tens of thousands of images submitted by
photojournalists from around the world. The results of this year’s
contest were announced on February 14, with six awards going to
photographers on assignment for National Geographic magazine. A seventh award went to Bruno D’Amicis, whose photograph of a captive fennec fox won 1st prize for a single photograph in the Nature category. With the support of National Geographic
magazine and Senior Editor for Natural History Kathy Moran, D’Amicis
was able to continue his personal project documenting the fennec fox,
resulting in this image. Here, Moran and D’Amicis share their thoughts
on the plight of this sought-after desert animal.
Kathy Moran, Senior Editor, Natural History
Bruno D’Amicis’ photograph of the fennec fox is all about
passion, the drive to keep going after a story until you feel you’ve
covered every angle. When Bruno first shared his fox photographs with
me, he had a lovely set of images that showed fennecs in their desert
environment. Camera trap photographs of foxes by moonlight, females
with cubs, young animals at play gave no hint of the conservation issues
impacting the species. Bruno had spent weeks tracking the foxes. When
his resources were exhausted, he had to return home.
He sent me the
photographs in hope of securing funding to go back to Tunisia for
additional work. When I asked him what more he hoped to photograph he
said would not be satisfied until he had documented animals that had
been captured for the pet trade. National Geographic supported
Bruno’s return trip to the Sahara. It wasn’t easy to access animals in
captivity but he finally found this small fox that had been captured by
nomads and given to a young boy as a pet. His determination to expose
the plight of wild animals captured because they rate high on the cute
scale is worthy of recognition.
We don’t really know much about the biology of the fennec
fox, although it gets promptly recognized by everyone for its cuteness
and its incredibly large ears that help it locate food among the sand
dunes and radiate its body heat. The fennec is the quintessential desert
animal, whose range covers almost the entire North of Africa and the
whole Sahara. It can survive without water by getting fluids from its
prey. Its furry pugs can walk on the hottest sand and it is able to dig
within seconds a burrow to escape predators and desert heat. Desert
nomads tell countless tales praising the fennec’s intelligence, while no
extensive scientific research has ever been carried out to describe the
life of the smallest canid in the world.
In the image, you can see an adult fennec, about a year
old, caught in the wild as a pup by some desert nomads and then given to
a kid, who kept it illegally as a pet in a sheep pen located in the
outskirts of a village in the Tunisian Sahara. The fennec was tied with a
short leash to a wheel rim and barely had any room to move around. It
often tried to burrow into the sand floor, both to escape people and the
animals sharing the pen with it. Although the young owner truly loved
his pet, the animal was kept in miserable conditions and was very
stressed and underfed.
A camera-trap setup reveals a fennec digging for beetles among the roots of a Retam broom shrub.
I photographed this fennec on two separate occasions and
only for very brief periods of time, so as to not to add more stress to
its situation. Although I had been asked, I resolutely refused to pay a
fee to take these pictures and thereby support this practice. I asked
around if the animal could be released, but I was told it had spent too
much time in captivity to survive back in the wild. I then spoke at
length with the owner about the cruelty of keeping the fennec as a pet.
I asked him to reflect upon this, to use a longer leash and take the
animal out for walks. I heard later he released this fennec. Nobody has
seen it since. I hope it made it back to its natural habitat, but I am
aware this is a remote possibility.
The practice of catching fennec pups in the wild is
widespread in North African countries. Because of their cuteness, local
people aim to sell or use them as a tourist attraction. Everyone, both
the villagers and the tourists who naively support this by paying money
for pictures or even purchasing such animals—which is illegal—has to be
considered somehow guilty. The destruction of the fragile desert
habitat, the ongoing massacre of wildlife, and the lack of general
conservation regulations are posing a serious threat to this and other
unique desert species. The situation has gotten much worse since the
“Arab spring” revolts and resulting difficult socio-economic conditions.
The tail of an adult fennec hangs from a Tunisian car’s rear view mirror as a lucky charm.
For me, photojournalism is above all about documenting reality and
raising awareness. I wish I never had to witness such sad situations and
was instead left to treasure the precious moments I had watching this
amazing species free in its habitat made of silence and ephemeral dunes,
but I firmly believe this is one of those stories worth telling in
their entirety. So, as harsh and disturbing it might be, I hope this
image will make more people aware of the ongoing crisis affecting
Saharan wildlife and reflect upon what are we doing to the natural world
with even our simplest actions.
Bruno D’Amicis
worked extensively in southern Tunisia over 2012 and 2013 on a personal
project aimed at documenting both the natural history and the issue of
the trade and exploitation of the fennec fox (Vulpes zerda) in a typical
North African country.
An
Arctic fox emerges from the mist. Apart from its nose and eyes, it is
barely visible against the snowy backdrop. The award-winning image was
one of many captured by British photographer Anna Henly at the Seal
River, in Manitoba, Canada. Picture: Anna Henly / Barcroft USA
She
flew to the remote region with photographer and biologist Matthias
Breiter hoping to see polar bears. Instead they were greeted by a
group of inquisitive Arctic foxes, and she spent 10 days photographing
them. Picture: Anna Henly / Barcroft USA
"They
are very curious animals and were coming up to investigate us," said
Anna. "They are scavengers and so they were looking for anything they
can eat or were squabbling with each other over any food." Picture: Anna Henly / Barcroft USA
Anna, who lives in Edinburgh, said the foxes were surprisingly tame, considering they have little contact with humans. Picture: Anna Henly / Barcroft USA
She said: "There was quite a lot of interaction. You felt they were interested in you as much as you were interested in them. Picture: Anna Henly / Barcroft USA
"They
took to sleeping outside the hut as well. It was nice to wake up in the
morning and see a fox curled up. They would yawn at you or scowl at
you." Picture: Anna Henly / Barcroft USA
She added: "It was definitely a highlight of my life. It was wonderful being somewhere so remote - it was true wilderness." Picture: Anna Henly / Barcroft USA
