People and Nature category winner: Why did the sloth cross the road? by Andrew Whitworth (Osa Conservation and University of Glasgow), taken in Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica. “I was driving out from the Osa Peninsula, located on the southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica on a dark, stormy day. This female three-toed sloth (Bradypus variegatus) had luckily just about made it across the road, and the drivers of the Toyota on this occasion had spotted her in good time”. (Photo by Andrew Whitworth/2019 British Ecological Society Photography Competition)

One of two black-and-white ruffed lemur pups born at Blair Drummond Safari and Adventure Park, near Stirling, UK on Friday, May 24, 2024.The critically endangered lemur pups, both female were born on April 14 and have been named Nova, meaning “new” and Evie meaning “life”. (Photo by Andrew Milligan/PA Images via Getty Images)

An undated handout picture made available by the Symbio Wildlife Park on 28 November 2016 shows three Pygmy Marmoset monkeys including an adult male, a female juvenile and a four-week-old baby, at the Symbio Wildlife Park in Helensburgh, South of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. (Photo by EPA/Symbio Wildlife Park)

A Turkana man and a boy carrying a gun look on as a G3 battle rifle hangs from a structure used to dry fish at a fishing camp on the shores of Lake Turkana, some kilometres from Todonyang near the Kenya-Ethiopia border in northwestern Kenya October 12, 2013The Turkana are traditionally nomadic pastoralists, but they have seen the pasture that they need to feed their herds suffer from recurring droughts and many have turned to fishing. However, Lake Turkana is overfished, and scarcity of food and pastureland is fuelling long-standing conflict with Ethiopian indigenous Dhaasanac, who have seen grazing grounds squeezed by large-scale government agricultural schemes in southern Ethiopia. The Dhaasanac now venture ever deeper into Kenyan territory in search of fish and grass, clashing with neighbours. Fighting between the communities has a long history, but the conflict has become ever more fatal as automatic weapons from other regional conflicts seep into the area. While the Turkana region is short of basics like grass and ground-water, it contains other resources including oil reserves and massive, newly discovered underground aquifers. (Photo by Siegfried Modola/Reuters)

Soldiers evacuate a hostage from a mass shooting scene at the Terminal 21 shopping mall in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, 09 February 2020. According to media reports, at least 21 people were killed, and as many as 30 wounded after a Thai soldier, identified as 32-year-old Jakraphanth Thomma, went on a shooting rampage with a M60 machine gun in the city of Nakhon Ratchasima, also known as Korat. Thomma held an unknown number of people hostage within the Terminal 21 shopping mall for around 17 hours before being shot and killed in a police operation. (Photo by Rungroj Yongrit/EPA/EFE)

A CIT guard carries his gun handgun while bringing a bag containing cash inside an armoured vehicle during a money collection in Johannesburg's CBD, on December 8, 2020. As the Christmas festive season approaches, cash-in-transit (CIT) companies are gearing up as they continue to be target of crime, with about 3000 money vans traveling daily nationwide. Despite the COVID-19 lockdown, there have been 260 cash-in-transit heist incidents in South Africa this year, with 19 CIT crew members killed. Cash-in-transit heists in the country are often military-style planned operations with criminals recurring to bomb making and assault rifles attacks. (Photo by Michele Spatari/AFP Photo)

A South American marine animal rescue group “S.O.S Rescate de Fauna Marina” is raising a baby La Plata Dolphin (Pontoporia blainvillei) found beached near Montevideo city with its umbilical cord still attached. The group is headed by Richard Tesore who is shown swimming with the baby female dolphin near the seaside resort of Piriapolis in Uruguay.

American nature and wildlife photographer Paul Souders is very well-travelled around the globe. In one of his exploits, we have his series of images shot in the ice capped shores of Churchill, Canada. Souders took his Zodiac boat to Hudson Bay in midsummer and waited there for three days before he finally saw a bear, a young female while on sea ice around 30 miles offshore.