Photographer Page

Emmanuel Rondeau

Hunters told Skidmore that smuggling techniques include bribing customs officials at border crossings to China, hiding body parts in logging shipments, and grinding up tiger bones and hiding the powder in women’s handbags. “I think it’s important to bring the truth to the stage and say this is happening,” says Masha Vorontsova, the former director of the Russian branch of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Rangers inspect tiger tracks on a road in Ussurisky Nature Reserve, in Primorye.

Amur tigers, sometimes called Siberian tigers, live mostly in Russia’s Far East. Expanding logging roads make it easier for poachers to find and kill the protected cats, whose body parts are valued for traditional Chinese medicine.

It took wildlife photographer Emmanuel Rondeau five months to capture this hopeful image of a stag grazing peacefully on a dedicated wildlife crossing over a busy motorway in the Charente-Maritime region of France. The crossing is used by an incredible number of animals throughout the year, he says, leading to “an image that tells a story about how humans and animals can coexist and evolve around a structure allowing ecological continuity.” The image was awarded first prize in the ‘Reasons for Hope’ category.