FORCES OF NATURE

The World Nature Photography Awards celebrate the call of the wild, and encourage us to protect what we have.

The World Nature Photography Awards are built on a simple philosophy: “Whilst we know that the challenges around climate change are enormous, amazing things can be achieved if we all come together to effect change.” This year’s winning images celebrate the call of the wild.

Deadline for entries to the 2021 World Nature Photography Awards is June 30, at www.worldnaturephotographyawards.com/enter

Sedge wren splits (above): A sedge wren (Cistothorus stellaris) shows off its dexterity, balancing between two stems of grass in the Falkland Islands in the remote South Atlantic. This wren is the islands’ smallest bird species and one of two wrens. Unlike the Cobb’s wren, which is only found in the Falklands, subspecies of the sedge wren can be found throughout the Americas – but it is often elusive as it flits through its grassland habitat.

Photographer: Andy Pollard Award: Silver in Behaviour – Birds

Into the blue (left): Early one summer morning, Andre Fajardo freedives below the Hawaiian waves. He’s surrounded by a bait ball, which forms when small fish swarm into a spherical formation, commonly to defend from predators.

Photographer: Christa Funk Award: Gold in People and Nature

Glacial veins (above): This otherworldly image captures a glacial river as it flows down through black sands of the south coast of Iceland to the Atlantic. Glaciers blanket approximately 11% of Iceland’s land area, with the largest located in the southern and central highlands – but as the world warms and glaciers melt into rivers, the country’s landscape is being dramatically reshaped.

Photographer: Dipanjan Pal Award: Gold in Nature Art

The real joker (left): This toothy grin belongs to a parrotfish, a family of charismatic characters found in tropical reefs around the world. These fish use their teeth – 1000, lined up in 15 rows in a beak structure – to crunch up coral, eating not only the calcium carbonate skeleton but also soft-bodied polyps, algae and bacteria. Parrotfish absorb the tissue and excrete sand – up to 450 kilograms per year. In the Maldives, where this image was snapped, the tides are too gentle to grind down coral debris; scientists think parrotfish are the architects of the islands’ beaches.

Photographer: Pavlos Evangelidis Award: Bronze in Nature Art

The world upside down (above): The Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) is an ape in crisis: over the last 60 years, the massive expansion of palm oil plantations has destroyed more than half of its rainforest habitat, sending populations plummeting. This intelligent species is now critically endangered, with just 100,000 individuals left in the wild. Since orangutans spend 95% of their lives in trees, capturing this image was a feat of patience: the photographer climbed a tree that grew in a watery area and lay in wait for hours for the perfect moment, knowing that he was on a path that orangutans regularly followed to cross to another island. His perseverance paid off.

Photographer: Thomas Vijaya Award: Gold in Animals in Their Habitat; Grand Prize of World Nature Photographer of the Year

An interloper approaches (above): On the Serengeti plains, an intruder dares to approach a water hole already claimed by a small pride of lions

(Panthera leo) – and is attacked. The battle ends with the interloper successfully chased away. Home to over 3000 lions, the Serengeti in northern Tanzania is thought to have the largest population in Africa, likely because of the abundance of prey – including 1.5 million wildebeest, which every year undertake the world’s largest remaining unaltered migration.

Photographer: Patrick Nowotny Award: Gold in Behaviour – Mammals

Mist over the swamp (left): Misty dawn over a lake in east Texas in early autumn. Rising from the water are bald cypress trees (Taxodium

distichum): long-lived, slow-growing trees with water-resistant wood. A common sight in southwestern USA, thousands thrive in swamps, lakes and bayous. The trees are deciduous, but in warm climates the leaves can persist year-round. Here, the fall foliage lights up the water below.

Photographer: Doron Talmi Award: Gold in Plants and Fungi

No horn, no problem (above): In the Thanda Safari Game Reserve in South Africa, dehorning white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum) is considered a necessary evil. After a rhino is immobilised with a powerful cocktail of drugs, the horn – made primarily of keratin – is sliced off above the living growth plate at the base, in order to make the rhino less valuable and thus save its life. Ten years ago, more than 1000 rhinos were killed each year in South Africa by poachers, seeking to sell horns for everything from traditional medicine to status symbols. By 2019 this number had dropped to 594.

Photographer: Gunther de Bruyne Award: Gold in Nature Photojournalism

We’re gonna need a bigger boat (below): A northern giant petrel (Macronectes halli) floats above the Ningaloo Reef, off the coast of Western Australia. In winter and spring, these migratory birds are regular visitors to Australian waters, with their range extending as far north as the subtropics, but they breed in the chillier southern latitudes on subantarctic islands and South Georgia. Their wingspan is huge, reaching over two metres – here, a trick of perspective makes this petrel look like birdzilla.

Photographer: Naomi Rose Award: Silver in People and Nature