Best Photo, Yellowstone-to-Yukon Region
Banff Mountain Photography Competition

A rare swift fox pauses on a December morning in Canada's Cochrane Wildlife Reserve.

Canadian photographer Robert Berdan was given permission to photograph the free-roaming animal inside the reserve, part of which is in southwestern Alberta.

In Canada "the swift fox was considered extirpated [extinct in the wild], but due to the efforts of various breeding programs that release foxes into the wild, this species has now been downgraded to endangered" by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, Berdan said in a statement.

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