Amateur honorable mention | Common raven at Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. (Photo by Colleen Gara/Audubon Photography Awards)

The fourth annual BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition aims to celebrate the diversity of life on Earth, and encourages people to protect and conserve it. Here: “The Salmon Catchers”. Terrestrial Wildlife. To capture this view of a mother grizzly bear and her cub, photographer Peter Mather set up a camera trap on a log that he knew the bears tended to traverse while fishing for salmon, in the Yukon River watershed in Canada. (Photo by Peter Mather/BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition 2017)

Dancers Marion Krebs and Judy Ness, right, pose as batter and catcher in front of the Chicago White Sox dugout before start of game with Detroit at Comiskey Park, Chicago, Ill., September 18, 1959. White Sox won, 1-0, to move within two games of clinching the American League pennant. (Photo by AP Photo)

Brian Skerry can be called many things – explorer, journalist, conservation advocate – but he is first and foremost a photographer. His journeys to capture amazing underwater photographs have taken him across the world’s oceans. Photo: This Bahamian oceanic whitetip shark, known for the distinctive coloring on its white-tipped, rounded extremities, is part of a globally threatened species due to overfishing demands, primarily for its fins. (Photo by Brian Skerry)

A view of the silhouettes of people, passing across a bridge over the frozen Lake Murat, trying to go on their daily lives despite the cold during winter season in Agri, Turkiye on February 10, 2025. (Photo by Abdullah Soylemez/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Protestor Bill Maloney (L) shouts during a live TV broadcast by BBC News Channel chief political correspondent Norman Smith after earlier forcing Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to abandon a photocall near Parliament on March 19, 2014 in London, England. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne has delivered his Budget statement to Members of Parliament in the House of Commons. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

“Cassowaries are large, flightless birds related to emus and (more distantly) to ostriches, rheas, and kiwis”, writes Olivia Judson in the September issue of National Geographic magazine. How large? People-size: Adult males stand well over five foot five and top 110 pounds. Females are even taller, and can weigh more than 160 pounds. Dangerous when roused, they’re shy and peaceable when left alone. But even birds this big and tough are prey to habitat loss. The dense New Guinea and Australia rain forests where they live have dwindled. Today cassowaries might number 1,500 to 2,000. And because they help shape those same forests – by moving seeds from one place to another – “if they vanish”, Judson writes, “the structure of the forest would gradually change” too. (Photo by Christian Ziegler/National Geographic)

A man takes a “selfie” with camels at a farm in Taif November 1, 2014. Saudi Arabia said late on Wednesday it had detected six new cases of the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 24 hours, the biggest daily jump for months with officials blaming lax hospital procedures. Scientists are not sure of the origin of the virus, but several studies have linked it to camels and some experts think it is being passed to humans through close physical contact or through the consumption of camel meat or camel milk. (Photo by Mohamed Alhwaity/Reuters)