Mozambique army soldiers take a ride on a motorbike in the streets of Palma, Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, 12 April 2021. The violence unleashed more than three years ago in Cabo Delgado province escalated again about two weeks ago, when armed groups first attacked the town of Palma. (Photo by Joao Relvas/EPA/EFE)

Winner – Animal Portraits: The pose by Mogens Trolle, Denmark. A young male proboscis monkey cocks his head slightly and closes his eyes. Unexpected pale blue eyelids now complement his immaculately groomed auburn hair. He poses for a few seconds as if in meditation. He is a wild visitor to the feeding station at Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary in Sabah, Borneo – “the most laid-back character”, says Trolle, “quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen on another monkey” – connects us, he hopes, with a fellow primate. (Photo by Mogens Trolle/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2020)

An alpaca chewing a leaf is pictured on November 18, 2014 in the zoo of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. (Photo by Frank Rumpenhorst/AFP Photo/DPA)

Afghan girl athletes perform Wushu on the top of a hill in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, January 18, 2017. In the conservative Afghan society where people especially in the countryside deeply believe in the old traditions and don't allow their girls and female members of the family to go out of home, exercising sport in open is extremely risky, but a group of girls are broken the taboo and exercising Wushu on a hilltop where the temperature is minus 2 Celsius degrees. (Photo by Rahmat Alizadah/Xinhua/Barcroft Images)

A pine marten – one of a few wild mammals doing well in Britain (although they number just 3,700). A fifth of the country’s wild mammals are at high risk of extinction, research shows. (Photo by Maurice Flynn/The Mammal Society)

European bisons (also known as Wisent) at the Bison farm in Muczne, southeastern Poland, 30 December 2018. The Bison farm is a continuation of bison breeding in Bieszczady, which was started in 1963. Here visitors can admire the bison of Bialowieza-Caucasian line, also called the mountain race. The European Bison is the national animal of Poland. (Photo by Darek Delmanowicz/EPA/EFE)

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)

A red squirrel leaps over a gray squirrel after the larger squirrel became annoyed with its territory being encroached upon, Saturday, May 28, 2022, in Freeport, Maine. (Photo by Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photo)