Natalya Saprunova’s evocative images from Canada’s Arctic—of hunters adapting to shifting birds, communities facing thawing permafrost, and coastlines breaking apart—won the New Scientist Editors Award in Earth Photo 2026.
On a pale Arctic day in Tuktoyaktuk. a hunter holds a goose decoy meant to lure migrating birds—faux geese arranged against a sky that looks almost still. In Natalya Saprunova’s winning photograph, the calm is deceptive. Banks of melting ice and murky water sit behind the hunter. and the birds the decoy is trying to summon now seem harder to reach. shaped by a warming climate that is already rewriting migration patterns.
Saprunova’s series. which won the New Scientist Editors Award in the Earth Photo 2026 competition. brings together scenes from Canada’s North where tradition and survival are being pulled apart by thawing ground. Indigenous peoples in the region used to make these decoys from reeds. Saprunova documents—but the changes aren’t only about what materials are available. Rising temperatures have affected the actual birds, shifting when and how they move, and making them harder to hunt. The result is a kind of quiet disruption: the familiar tools still appear in the frame. but they no longer work the way they once did.
In her images from Victoria Island, another staple of life is shown in motion. Below, an Inuit resident handles fish, an essential resource for the community. Permafrost thawing accelerates coastal erosion. and that destabilization can introduce harmful compounds like mercury into habitats of fish that people commonly eat. Saprunova’s photographs place food, and the safety of that food, directly on the line.
In Ulukhaktok. on Victoria Island. she returns to the theme of what’s changing at ground level and what follows in everyday life. One of the photographs widens the lens to capture the Arctic landscape itself: a web of sunken polygons filled with water. with conical. ice-cored hills rising here and there. As permafrost melts. the land becomes uneven. making it harder for animals like caribou to traverse their home—an altered terrain that threatens both wildlife and the routines tied to it.
“The thaw is not just melting ice. it is reshaping the map upon which animals and people have always relied. ” Saprunova writes in her submission for the prize. In her sequence. that sentence lands like a warning delivered in photographs—because the consequences become visible fast. sometimes too close to homes to ignore.
Near Tuktoyaktuk, her work turns to the hamlet of Sachs Harbour, where whole cliffs of permafrost are disappearing. One image shows a rugged, uneven cliff laced with cracks positioned dangerously close to residences. The neat edges of homes sit against eroding land. forcing the viewer to notice the distance shrinking between shelter and collapse.
Canada has the longest inhabited Arctic coastline in the world, and Saprunova captures what that might mean when the ground itself won’t stay put. She notes that some inhabitants in the country stand the grim chance of becoming Canada’s first climate refugees.
Her series doesn’t stop at one failing shoreline. Saprunova also photographs Pelly Island, known to be disappearing, where the permafrost that once comprised it is now melting away. As it thaws. it releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere—an effect that could. devastatingly. speed up both the rise in global temperatures and further melting of the island. In the images. a cliff of black rock looks monstrously barren. with a tiny human figure nearby at the water’s edge. while exposed veins of gray and white rock underline how intensely climate change is wounding the landscape.
The exhibition plans to bring these images to the public: photos from Saprunova’s winning series will be shown at an exhibition at the Royal Geographic Society in London until 24 July.
Arctic climate change permafrost Natalya Saprunova Earth Photo 2026 New Scientist Editors Award Inuit Tuktoyaktuk Sachs Harbour Pelly Island mercury in fish Royal Geographic Society photography
Arctic is melting, shocking (not).
So the birds moved because it’s warmer, and now hunting is harder? That seems kinda obvious but also sad. I wonder if they even have the same fish or geese anymore.
Wait mercury in fish because of permafrost thaw? Isn’t mercury from factories and stuff, like not even related? I’m not saying it’s fake, just seems like they’re blaming everything on climate.
The photo sounds peaceful but “deceptive” like the calm is hiding the ice melt… cool concept I guess. Also those goose decoys made from reeds—so if the reeds change availability then the whole tradition changes? Makes me think we should be stopping it way earlier, like years ago, but people still argue about it. Hard to focus on anything else after reading that.