It’s a stunning image, but an award-winning photograph of a wolf jumping over a farm gate is being attacked as a misrepresentation—that the wild wolf is in fact a trained wolf from a wildlife park. Two months after Spanish photographer José Luis Rodrîguez’s picture of an Iberian wolf won the world’s most prestigious wildlife photography competition, held by the BBC Wildlife Magazine and Britain’s Natural History Museum, a Finnish magazine accused Rodrîguez of setting up the shot.

Rodrîguez denies wrongdoing.

Organizers are investigating the allegations. “Using a trained animal model would break the competition rules and we take any such allegation very seriously. Consequently, we have been looking into the details of this claim, and we are reconvening our judging panel as soon as possible to consider the information that we have obtained,” said a spokesman for the museum.

In describing the award, organizers wrote:

“José Luis visualized this image many years ago, when Iberian wolves first returned to Ávila in the Castilla y León region of northern Spain, and cattle ranchers declared war on them. His idea was a picture that would symbolize the ancient conflict between humans and wolves, while showing the beauty and strength of this fabled animal. But it took a long time to find the ideal location, let alone a wolf that would jump a gate. His chance came when he found a landowner who was happy to have both the wolves and José Luis on his property, and also had the ideal setting: a copse and an ancient, disused cattle corral.

“José Luis started by placing meat in the corral. Once he knew a male wolf was visiting regularly, jumping the gate, he began to introduce the bits of equipment needed to set up a camera trap. At first, the wolf didn’t like the flash triggered by the trip beam, but after a few weeks he took no notice of the light or the clicks of the hidden digital camera. Now that the wolf was happy and the camera positioning was right, it was time to take the final picture with a medium-format camera. When the first transparencies arrived back from the lab, José Luis was overjoyed to find he finally had the picture he had dreamt of.”

Wolf experts say that jumping a fence is uncharacteristic of the species—they are far more likely to squeeze between the bars of the gate.

Suomen Luonto published the accusations on its website after being approached by a number of Spanish photographers. As evidence, it compared closeup photos of the wolf in Rodrîguez’s shot to a wolf named Ossian from a Madrid wildlife park. The creatures are strikingly similar, but the tame wolf features a mangled ear, which the critics say could have been damaged in a fight. When the ear was damaged would help clarify the issue, but the Finnish magazine apparently didn’t contact the wildlife park. Efforts by The Adventure Life to reach the park have been unsuccessful.

Animals’ bodies can vary tremendously throughout the year depending on food—though it’s probably less of a factor in a wildlife park—but even a brief inspection shows Ossian to be thicker, stockier, and more heavily furred than the jumping wolf. Markings on its back appear to be darker, too. Suomen Luonto says the differences can be explained by summer and winter coats.

The name of Rodrîguez’s winning image is “The Storybook Wolf”. It will be a sad irony indeed if it turns out to have been faked.

Tagged as: environment, wildlife