Tragic picture of an orphan macaque wins wildlife pictures award

This poignant picture of an orphaned child macaque awaiting its destiny at a market in Bali received an award within the Pure Historical past Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Yr competitors

By Gege Li

Photographer
Paul Hilton

ORPHANED and alone, this younger pig-tailed macaque has a bleak future forward. It’s one among many captured primates on sale at this open-air chicken market in Bali, Indonesia, the place it can both turn out to be somebody’s pet or be offered to a zoo or laboratory for biomedical analysis.

Conservation photojournalist Paul Hilton feigned curiosity in buying the macaque with a view to achieve entry to the market’s again room to take this shot of it chained to its cage, amid a backdrop of different younger macaques in the identical scenario. Titled Backroom Enterprise, the picture received the Wildlife Photojournalist Story Award on this 12 months’s Wildlife Photographer of the Yr competitors, developed and produced by the Pure Historical past Museum in London.

Pig-tailed macaques dwell in massive social teams within the wild, however as deforestation drives them out of their habitat, increasingly more are being shot as pests once they raid crops for meals. These which might be caught are packed intently collectively of their cages, encouraging the unfold of illness. Hilton’s work raises consciousness of the plight of those monkeys and different wildlife in worldwide commerce, in addition to the vital position animal markets play in enabling unlawful commerce in endangered species.

The Wildlife Photographer of the Yr exhibition is on on the Pure Historical past Museum from 16 October to six June 2021.