Nature is a beautiful, brutal place.
The 16 "highly commended" entries in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2020 Awards, run by the Natural History Museum in London, provide colourful — and sometimes shocking — proof of this.
The finalists feature everything from endangered species in Vietnam to out-of-control forest fires in Brazil. Some are beautifully-captured vignettes of life in the animal kingdom, while others provide evidence of the devastating impact human beings are having on the earth.
The winners will be announced on Oct. 13, but it'll be a hard task for the judges. Here are the finalists:
A grey reef shark cruising alongside molluscs over the Fakarava Atoll, in French Polynesia.Credit: laurent ballestaTall Araucaria trees piercing through a beech forest in Chile's Araucanía region.Credit: Andrea PozziA squirrel makes its escape from a pair of Ural owls in a forest on the Japanese island of Hokkaido.Credit: Makoto AndoAn encounter with an endangered red-shanked douc langur near Vietnam's Son Tra Nature Reserve.Credit: Arshdeep SinghAn out of control forest fire in Maranhão state, northeastern Brazil.Credit: Charlie Hamilton JamesA hippopotamus in the drought-stricken Mara River, in Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve.Credit: JoseFragozoTwo foxes tussle over a dead rat in a North London allotment.Credit: Matthew MaranA large male gharial provides a raft for his offspring in the National Chambal Sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh, northern India.Credit: Dhritiman MukherjeeA brown bear snatching a salmon in Alaska’s Katmai National Park.Credit: Hannah VijayanTwo possums hiding beneath the roof of a holiday park shower block in Yallingup, Western Australia.Credit: Gary MeredithA large wandering spider devouring the egg of a giant glass frog in Manduriacu Reserve, northwestern Ecuador.Credit: Jaime CulebrasA pair of Atlantic puffins, captured on the Farne Islands.Credit: Evie EasterbookYellow-billed choughs on the Alpstein Massif of the Swiss Alps.Credit: Alessandra MeniconziA section of Mildred Lake Tar Mine in Northern Alberta, Canada — an area that used to be boreal forest.Credit: Garth LenzThe dark reality of the bushmeat market, taken at the Tomohon Market in northern Sulawesi, Indonesia.Credit: Quentin MartinezA memorial to the albatrosses caught by the longlines of Japanese tuna-fishing boats of the coast of South Africa.Credit: Thomas P PeschakIf you happen to be in London, the images will be displayed in an exhibition at London's Natural History Museum from Friday, Oct. 16.
TopicsAnimals