Wildlife Photographer of the Year 60 announces People’s Choice winner

Residents of St Leonards-on-Sea, on England’s south coast, had been leaving scraps of food out on the pavement to encourage foxes. But the scraps were encouraging other urban wildlife as well.

Ian noticed that badgers living near his house were coming out to forage, passing by a piece of badger graffiti as they did so. The photographer set up a small hide on the edge of the road, waiting for the perfect opportunity to capture these animals in action.

As a solitary badger made its way along the pavement, glancing around the street, Ian’s moment had arrived. His photo shows the badger, illuminated by a nearby lamppost, seemingly looking up at the graffiti on the wall.

It struck a chord with the public, who crowned the image of this black-and-white art connoisseur as the People’s Choice winner for Wildlife Photographer of the Year 60.

“The outpouring of badger love since my photo was nominated for the People’s Choice Award has been beautifully overwhelming,” Ian says. “Finding out that it has won is truly humbling.”

“However, there is a darker side to this image. I live in rural Dorset where I’m on a rewilding mission to enhance habitats for a huge array of wildlife. The badger cull – which is still ongoing – has decimated their numbers and I fear that unless the cull is stopped, we’ll only see badgers in urban settings in several parts of England.”

“My hope is for this image to raise awareness of the damaging effect of the badger cull and help push for change.”

What do badgers eat?

The Eurasian badger, Meles meles, is a widespread member of the otter family with a range that stretches from the British Isles to western Asia. Part of this success is due to their omnivorous diet, which allows them to eat a wide range of foods to survive.

Badgers eat different foods depending on where they live, but earthworms tend to be a large part of their diet in northern Europe. Worms can represent over 60% of a badger’s diet, with an individual badger able to eat hundreds in one night.

Alongside other invertebrates such as insects and slugs, badgers consume a variety of other foods. Among the animals badgers eat are mice, rabbits, frogs and even hedgehogs! Badgers can eat hedgehogs because of their sharp claws, which allow them to cut into the spiny mammals.

In the autumn, badgers build up their fat reserves by eating nuts, eggs and other fatty foods so that they can survive the winter. While badgers don’t hibernate, the fat reserves nourish them during a state known as torpor that reduces their body temperature and activity during harsh conditions.

Badgers have more recently started adding to their fat reserves by eating human leftovers, with some studies suggesting that human food makes up around a quarter of the diet of urban badgers.

While this can provide badgers with the nutrients they need to survive the winter, it can also have serious consequences for their health. Certain foods, such as chocolate, are toxic to badgers and can even kill them.

European badgers

In the twentieth century, badger populations were severely threatened across Europe. Their woodland habitat was being cleared, primarily for agriculture and forestry, while disease and human persecution were also taking their toll.

Since the 1970s, however, the Eurasian badger has bounced back thanks to legal protections. While it’s not well known how many badgers there are in the whole of Europe, the population of badgers in England and Wales more than doubled to an estimated 500,000 by 2014.

Badgers are the UK’s largest living predator, and as a result play an important role in controlling populations of their prey. They’re also important ecosystem engineers, making an ecosystem more diverse by modifying it.

One of the main ways they do this is by digging out their underground homes, which are known as setts. Badger setts can last for decades or even centuries, as successive generations dig out a network of underground tunnels.

The excavation provides new opportunities for plants to grow and means that biodiversity around badger setts is often higher than the surrounding area. They’re also known for digging out latrines where the seeds carried in badger excrement can grow.

While badgers play an important role in the ecosystem, they can also spread bovine tuberculosis (TB), which is caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium bovis. Concerns over its impact on cattle mean that over 230,000 badgers have been culled in the UK since 2013 in an effort to eradicate the disease.

The badger cull has been controversial, with doubts raised about its effectiveness. The UK government has now announced that the cull is set to end by 2030, with a programme of vaccinations instead planned for cattle and badgers.

Visit the exhibition

Ian’s winning image is one of almost 60,000 entries to Wildlife Photographer of the Year 60, which highlights the beauty of nature and the challenges it faces.

Dr Douglas Gurr, the Director of the Natural History Museum, says, “Ian’s flawlessly timed image offers a unique glimpse of nature’s interaction with the human world, underscoring the importance of understanding urban wildlife.”

“His exceptional photograph serves as a powerful reminder that local nature and wildlife, often just outside our homes, can inspire and captivate us.”

Four other images from the contest were Highly Commended, including Francisco Negroni’s Earth and Sky, showing a double lenticular cloud hanging over the Villarrica volcano in Chile, and Edge of Night by Jess Findlay, an action shot showing a ghostly barn owl leaving a derelict barn to hunt.

You can see Ian’s winning People’s Choice photo alongside the four Highly Commended images on display in our Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition in London until 29 June 2025.