Pink flamingos are silhouetted and reflected in water at sunset in the Camargue regional natural park in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Southern France, on January 9, 2025. (Photo by Manon Cruz/Reuters)

“Sometimes i feel like photographers have uncovered a special secret. A crazy, amazing, and beautiful secret. The key to truly living. All i want is to be alive”. – Karrah Kobus

Photo: “All my life i lived in a bubble”. (Photo by Karrah Kobus)

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)

Global wildlife populations will decline by 67% by 2020 unless urgent action is taken to reduce human impact on species and ecosystems, warns the biennial Living Planet Index report from WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) and ZSL (Zoological Society of London). From elephants to eels, here are some of the wildlife populations most affected by human activity. Here: The maned wolf is among the large mammals in the Brazilian Cerrado that are threatened by the increasing conversion of grasslands into farmland for grazing and growing crops. (Photo by Ben Cranke/Nature Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo)

Wave Rock is a natural rock formation that is shaped like a tall breaking ocean wave. The "wave" is about 14 m (46 ft) high and around 110 m (360 ft) long. It forms the north side of a solitary hill, which is known as “Hyden Rock”. This hill, which is a granite inselberg, lies about 3 km (2 mi) east of the small town of Hyden and 296 km (184 mi) east-southeast of Perth, Western Australia. Wave Rock and Hyden Rock are part of a 160 ha (395-acre) nature reserve, Hyden Wildlife Park.

Women carry gas cylinders to fill them at a distribution point in Cairo January 19, 2015. Egypt is going through its worst energy crisis in decades and is seeking fresh sources of natural gas, which powers most of its homes and factories. (Photo by Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters)