The Current - Canada’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

We hear from Canadian Geographic's 2026 Wildlife Photographer of the Year, David Sturge, about a rare encounter with a seal pup on a melting ice sheet in a Newfoundland Bay, and the stories of environmental stewardship he tells through his pictures.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled. After all the awkwardness, disasters, and family drama, Mark Critch, is finally graduating. Maybe it's about not settling for the way things are, but making your own way. No, it's both jobs. And to move forward, he must hold on to what matters most. Don't give up on your dreams. Say goodbye to a Canadian comedy we've grown up with. Son of a Critch, the final season.

Stream now on CBC Jam. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. David Sturge has always had a deep connection to the outdoors, has traveled throughout his home province of Newfoundland and Labrador, photographing wildlife, capturing scenes of Arctic foxes, feeding on fish, puffins, perched on cliffs, harp seals, on snow-covered ice sheets.

His spectacular photographs have earned him the title of Canadian Geographic's wildlife photographer of the year. And this morning, David Sturge, is in Butterpot Provincial Park, just about a half an hour outside of St. John's. David, good morning. Good morning, man. How are you? Well, I'm okay. I want to get to the award,

and congratulations on the award. But where are you? I'm actually at my workplace. So I'm a park ranger with the province, and I'm here at Butterpot Provincial Park. Describe what you're looking at right now what you would see out of your workplace. Well, I've snuck away on my coffee break,

and I'm on a little side road, surrounded by trees in the forest on a beautiful gray still day in the St. John's area. So it feels very at home and very peaceful here to have this interview with you. What does a park ranger do on a day like today? Oh, we're shutting down the park. Actually, it's that time of the year again where all the campers are gone home and we get to shut down the park and enjoy the last week together as park rangers. And to really to celebrate, it's an interesting time in a year for us to celebrate a very successful season where campers and wilderness, of course, had a great year together.

And the park gets its house back after all the campers leave, presumably. You got it. And the animals get to, it's interesting to watch them as they slowly encroach back into the park, into the campgrounds themselves. And so it's very special for me that way to see the animals have their space back. completely. You grew up in Labrador City, is that right? That's right, yeah. Yeah, you've described the area that you grew up in as an ecological Disneyland. Can you tell me about that? Yeah, I mean, it's full of wonder when you're immersed in these kinds of spaces that I've been, especially at this point in life, to look back and to be very privileged to be in those spaces. So in Labrador to grow up being surrounded by the beauty of the northern lights and the majesty and of that spectacular event.

Or, you know, to see the great herds back in the day of the George River Caribou herd, which was over 800,000 animals. So, and we'd come to Newfoundland on our family vacations in the summer and be immersed in this coastal environment where marine life was thrifted. riving. So to see whales, to see crabs and snails and seaweed, all of that to me from a very early age shaped who I am today and that love for nature that really defines everything that I do. It sounds magical. It is magical. I'm very blessed, very privileged to live in not just an absolutely amazing province full of those wonders, but a country that's full of the same. Who put the camera into your hands at first? Oh, I get to blame Dad for that one. He started out with a small Argus Casina and just a family camera, if you will.

But it was addictive early on, not just taking the photograph, but the full experience of then developing the slides back then and putting them in the carousel and pulling down a white sheet in a room and making it a family event to sit around and look at family vacations and photos of special occasions. So the camera was always close to dad, and that really just, you know, led into my adult life where I've never really been without a camera. It's always been by my side and throughout different genres of photography throughout my life until the last few years when I've just exclusively done wildlife conservation photography. And all of that, it's just merged together so nice to the point where I've received this very humbling award from Canadian Geographic.

Photographers will often talk about when they're making photographs. They will develop an eye. They start to figure out how to look and how to see the world around them. And I just wonder when you as a photographer were looking through that lens, how did you see that natural world that you grew up in differently? Yeah, and I think that's the difference with wildlife photography and the newness that it's brought to my life is when you do immerse yourself in these environments, you're there for extended periods of time, sometimes days, even weeks.

And in some cases, you know, you're trying to get that shot over the course of years. And you can't help but forge this closer bond with the subjects, first of all, that you're photographing. When you're lying down in the fields and you, you know, you smell the juniper and you smell the vegetation and the salt water. And you're just in these places where you've allotted this time to really, develop that relationship and it gets very profound you really do start to like anything you spend enough time with it you forge that relationship so i feel that i've really just been lucky to you know to develop that eye yeah for for the behaviors for where the subjects are and how they act you know that's coming it just keeps learning and growing but i've really what i love about it is that

through that lens i've got to see the world so differently and see nature and why life so differently. Let me ask you about some of those subjects. Tell me about the seal pups. Oh, goodness. That was very profound for me. So I traveled to the Northern Peninsula, winter passed, and today's travel, and to get to this rare situation where the ice pack had moved into this community on the Northern Peninsula, and the seals had come in to give birth to their pups. So I was very fortunate to get to this place where it's only half. happened a few times in the last number of decades that the ice has come in the way that it has and they've seen seals to those numbers.

There were thousands of them. And looking further out on the ice sheets on the ice pack, it was just, it was littered with seals giving birth to the ice, or to the pups on the ice. So it was this phenomenal experience that I was so lucky. And I was the only one really that was there taking these photos. So I got to really take my time and see how all of that occurred. But some of those pictures in particular, one seal pup that really caught my attention was smaller, more lethargic, and he didn't go anywhere. So I really had the opportunity to photograph him over a while.

But when I was lying down on the ice, I seen the carcass of an adult seal that was mostly covered in snow. and when I put it together, I realized that it was likely the mother of this pup. And that's the reason he was smaller and it wasn't, you know, wasn't looking good for him to make it. So those, you know, sometimes the stories are hard and it's hard to watch. But there's a great story behind that. When I finished up this project and was leaving the area, a friend of mine messaged me and he said, did you get your shots? And I was like, oh man, I had the most incredible experience with these pups.

He said it's a good thing because every. Every bit of ice in that area has moved out to sea. And the sad part about that is the pups weren't an age or developed enough to start their life in the ocean. And so it was a catastrophe in many sense for these young pups, but a story of climate change, of our warming planet. And here, Newfoundland and Labrador, which something we don't speak about enough, is that how climate change is impacting us and the wildlife here. Well, and you would see that firsthand, right? So how have you seen the landscape that you love so much change? It's, for me, it hits hard when I see those types of events,

when the bays and coves that used to be so important to even the fishery, you know, the seal harvesting and even transportation back many years ago, that's the ice that's surrounded the island of Newfoundland. And even, you know, getting up into Labrador, it's gone. It's in my lifetime, I've gone from seeing that, you know, something you never think would disappear to it's almost completely absent year round now. So, you know, you get further north, you get the ice flows that still happen,

but it's not to the extent that it was anymore. So to see that and to see, you know, the industrial development, that, you know, the things that are being spoke about as Canada grows now and we're eager to have more hydro development in this project and more oil. And these things are very much in the forefront, but we're not having the discussions enough about, you know, what's important to us as Newfoundlanders and Labradorians and as Canadians. As we grow and change in this environment,

are we putting the environment in the forefront enough through this change? What do you see as the opportunity just finally in the role that you have? You're named Canadian Geographic's Wildlife Photographer of the Year. And as you said, you've been photographing the natural world exclusively for the last few years. In your words, for the purpose of conservation. And so what do you see is your opportunity to tell a story about this changing world and those who live in the changing world in this role? I think, first of all, it's a true honor because Canadian Geographic has really been a part of shaping my ideas of culture, of environment of conservation since such a young age.

So to be in this place and it all kind of happened organically, like it's still so shocking to me that I'm here, but to be part of their storyline is exciting, but also to have the voice, like to be here with you today and to be able to speak. And as I like to say, on behalf of the animals that I photographed, to be their voice.

And I really feel that responsibility more than ever to say to the world, to all of us that, you know, we need to connect more with nature. And I think conservation is something that happens naturally through that growth. It happened for me naturally. When we spend time in nature, when we spend time with these animals and value them and respect them more, we start thinking about how do we grow? How do we, how do we impact? We can't get through this world without having that footprint.

And we have to decide, I mean, each of us, how we do. that. So my hope is to influence individuals as we go forward with great images, with great stories. And now I have that voice a little louder than certainly I did before. And I'm excited about that. I'm excited to represent nature and wildlife throughout this province and Canada. And encourage people to get out into that nature, right? As you said, you develop that relationship by being in those spaces. Oh, and I love my partner, Tanya, always has this saying she's a, she's an ultramarathon trail runner. When she's in the wood, she says that it feels like the forest is hugging her. And I think that's such a beautiful description that when you're out here, you feel that

and the health benefits of just being out here and disconnecting from the busyness of screens in our digital world. And yeah, it really shifts our perspective on what we have right here at our fingertips. I feel like I have a pretty good job. You have kind of a dream job. Lucky you to be able to do this. And congratulations on the recognition for the great work that you're doing, David. I really appreciate it, Matt. I'm looking forward to the journey and sharing the beauty of this country more and more as time goes on. Right on. Thank you very much.

Thank you. David Sturge is a park ranger, a wildlife photographer. He is the 26 Canadian Geographic Wildlife Photographer of the Year. And we reached him in beautiful Butter Park Provincial Park just outside of St. John's, Newfoundland, and Labrador. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.ca.ca slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts.

My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.