Capturing the Wild: 13 Award-Winning Wildlife Photographs with a Metallic Edge
Hikkaduwa Liyanage Prasantha Vinod Wildlife Photographer of the Year.jpg
In a village where forests once grew, a tiger lounges on a grassy hillside. India’s Western Ghats has a stable population of the majestic big cats, but nearby development has impacted the area’s overall tiger population. Using a drone, Robin Darius Conz captured a compelling image that illustrates this ongoing clash between humans and wildlife. The photo, titled “Tiger in Town” (below), took home the top prize in the Urban Wildlife category at the 2024 Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards.
“Tiger in Town“ Robin Darius Conz watches a tiger on a hillside against the backdrop of a town where forests once grew. Robin was following this tiger as part of a documentary team filming the wildlife of the Western Ghats. On this day, he used a drone to watch the tiger explore its territory before it settled in this spot. The protected areas in the Western Ghats, where tigers are carefully monitored, are some of the most biodiverse landscapes in India and have a stable population of tigers. Outside these areas, where development has created conflict between humans and wildlife, tiger occupancy has declined. Credit: Robin Darius Conz / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Canadian Marine Conservation Photojournalist Shane Gross was awarded overall Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2024 for his dazzling underwater image (below) showing hundreds of western toad tadpoles swimming through Cedar Lake on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Gross secured top honors amongst a record-setting 59,228 entries from 117 countries and territories.
(To see images in their full, stunning glory, click to expand.)
“The Swarm of Life“ Shane Gross looks under the surface layer of lily pads as a mass of western toad tadpoles swim past. Shane snorkelled in the lake for several hours, through carpets of lily pads. This prevented any disturbance of the fine layers of silt and algae covering the lake bottom, which would have reduced visibility. Western toad tadpoles swim up from the safer depths of the lake, dodging predators and trying to reach the shallows, where they can feed. The tadpoles start becoming toads between four and 12 weeks after hatching. An estimated 99% will not survive to adulthood. Credit: Shane Gross / Wildlife Photographer of the Year SHANE GROSS
Now in its 60th year, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London. One hundred of the winning and commended photographs are now on display at the museum through June 29, 2025.
“An Evening Meal” Parham Pourahmad watches as the last rays of the setting sun illuminate a young Cooper’s hawk eating a squirrel. Over a single summer, Parham visited Ed R Levin County Park most weekends to take photographs. He wanted to showcase the variety of wildlife living within a busy metropolitan city, and to illustrate that ‘nature will always be wild and unpredictable’. The Cooper’s hawk is a common species across southern Canada, the USA, and central Mexico, where it inhabits mature and open woodlands. These adaptable birds also live in urban spaces, where there are tall trees to nest in, and bird feeders that attract smaller birds, which they can prey on. Credit: Parham Pourahmad, USA / Wildlife Photographer of the Year“Dolphins of the Forest“ Thomas Peschak documents the relationship between endangered Amazon river dolphins, also known as botos or pink river dolphins, and the people with whom they share their watery home. The Amazon river dolphin’s relationship with humans is complex. Traditional Amazonian beliefs hold that the dolphins can take on human form, and they are both revered and feared. Others see them as thieves who steal fish from nets and should be killed. Thomas took these images in areas where local communities are creating opportunities for tourists to encounter the dolphins. This brings another set of problems: when they’re fed by humans, the dolphins become unhealthy and younger individuals don’t learn to hunt for themselves. Credit: Thomas Peschak / Wildlife Photographer of the Year Thomas P. Peschak“Frontier of the Lynx“ Igor Metelskiy shows a lynx stretching in the early evening sunshine, its body mirroring the undulating wilderness. The remote location and changing weather conditions made access to this spot – and transporting equipment there – a challenge. Igor positioned his camera trap near the footprints of potential prey. It took more than six months of waiting to achieve this relaxed image of the elusive lynx. A survey carried out in 2013 estimated the entire Russian lynx population was around 22,500 individuals, with numbers for the Russian Far East, including those in Primorsky Krai, at 5,890. Credit: Igor Metelskiy / Wildlife Photographer of the Year Igor Metelskiy“Wetland Wrestle by Karine Aigner“ Karine Aigner recognises the skin of a yellow anaconda as it coils itself around the snout of a yacaré caiman. The tour group Karine was leading had stopped to photograph some marsh deer when she noticed an odd shape floating in the water. Through binoculars, Karine quickly recognised the reptiles and watched as they struggled with each other. Caimans are generalist feeders and will eat snakes. As anacondas get larger, they will include reptiles in their diet. It’s hard to determine who is the aggressor here. On the snake’s back are two tabanids, blood-sucking horseflies that are known to target reptiles. Credit: Karine Aigner / Wildlife Photographer of the Year“On Watch” John E Marriott frames a lynx resting, with its fully grown young sheltering from the cold wind behind it. John had been tracking this family group for almost a week, wearing snowshoes and carrying light camera gear to make his way through snowy forests. When fresh tracks led him to the group, he kept his distance to make sure he didn’t disturb them. Lynx numbers usually reflect the natural population fluctuations of their main prey species, the snowshoe hare. With climate change reducing snow coverage, giving other predators more opportunities to hunt the hares, hare populations may decline, in turn affecting the lynx population. Credit: John E Marriott / Wildlife Photographer of the Year John E. Marriott“Hope for the Ninu” Jannico Kelk illuminates a ninu, with the wire grass and shrubs behind it providing a frame against the darkness. Jannico spent each morning walking the sand dunes of a conservation reserve, searching for footprints that this rabbit-sized marsupial may have left the night before. Finding tracks near a burrow, he set up his camera trap. The greater bilby has many Aboriginal names, including ninu. It was brought to near extinction through predation by introduced foxes and cats. Within fenced reserves where many predators have been eradicated, the bilby is thriving. Credit: Jannico Kelk / Wildlife Photographer of the Year“The Demolition Squad” Ingo Arndt documents the efficient dismemberment of a blue ground beetle by red wood ants. ‘Full of ant’ is how Ingo described himself after lying next to the ants’ nest for just a few minutes. Ingo watched as the red wood ants carved an already dead beetle into pieces small enough to fit through the entrance to their nest. Much of the red wood ants’ nourishment comes from honeydew secreted by aphids, but they also need protein. They are capable of killing insects and other invertebrates much larger than themselves through sheer strength in numbers. Credit: Ingo Arndt / Wildlife Photographer of the Year Ingo Arndt Photography“Under the Waterline“ Matthew Smith carefully photographs a curious leopard seal beneath the Antarctic ice. Matthew used a specially made extension he designed for the front of his underwater housing to get this split image. It was his first encounter with a leopard seal. The young seal made several close, curious passes. ‘When it looked straight into the lens barrel, I knew I had something good.’ Though leopard seals are widespread and abundant, overfishing, retreating sea ice and warming waters mean that krill and penguins – their main food sources – are both in decline. Credit: Matthew Smith / Wildlife Photographer of the Year“Life Under Dead Wood” Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas rolls a log over to see the fruiting bodies of slime mould and a tiny springtail. Alexis worked fast to take this photograph, as springtails can jump many times their body length in a split second. He used a technique called focus stacking, where 36 images, each with a different area in focus, are combined. Springtails are barely two millimetres long (less than a tenth of an inch). They are found alongside slime moulds and leaf litter all over the world. They feed on microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi, improving soil by helping organic matter to decompose.Credit: Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas / Wildlife Photographer of the Year“A Diet of Deadly Plastic“ Justin Gilligan (Australia) creates a mosaic from the 403 pieces of plastic found inside the digestive tract of a dead flesh-footed shearwater. Justin has been documenting Adrift Lab’s work for several years, often joining them on beach walks at dawn to collect dead chicks. The team brings together biologists from around the world to study the impact of plastic pollution on marine ecosystems. Studies found that three quarters of adult flesh-footed shearwaters breeding on Lord Howe Island – and 100% of fledglings – contained plastic. The team, including a Natural History Museum scientist, discovered it causes scarring to the lining of the digestive tract, a condition called plasticosis. Credit: Justin Gilligan / Wildlife Photographer of the Year