A boat transports Pirarucu fish to a processing ship, in the San Raimundo settlement lake, in Carauari, Brazil, Tuesday, September 6, 2022, published November 3. The giant fish not so long ago nearly vanished. The illegal and unsustainable fishing left river and Indigenous communities struggling to catch their staple food. (Photo by Jorge Saenz/AP Photo)

A girl lights a candle as she marks the anniversary of 2015 Nepal earthquake, at Boudhanath stupa in Kathmandu, Nepal April 25, 2017. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

The Wildscreen festival is the world’s biggest celebration of screen-based natural history storytelling which takes place every two years in Bristol. Here: “Walrus in Midnight Sun”. Walrus feed mostly on bivalves in productive, shallow and often sandy habitats in the Arctic. This individual, though, arrived on a beach outside Tromsø, northern Norway, and found comfort on a stranded dead sperm whale. After two weeks he approached Audun, and only half a metre away he stretched his tusk forward and touched his hand gently. “This was one of the most memorable moments of my life”, Rikardsen says. He named the 500kg male Buddy. After two months, the dead whale was decomposed and Buddy suddenly disappeared. (Photo by Audun Rikardsen/Wildscreen 2016)

“Entwined Lives”. Tim Laman, US Winner, Wildlife photographer of the year. A young male orangutan makes the 30-metre climb up the thickest root of the strangler fig high above the canopy in Gunung Palung national park, one of the few protected orangutan strongholds in Indonesian Borneo. Laman had to do three days of climbing to position several GoPro cameras that he could trigger remotely. This shot was the one he had long visualised, looking down on the orangutan within its forest home. (Photo by Tim Laman/2016 Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

Contrasted against the white flowers in a cotton field, a brown bear is out for a ramble just after midnight in the second decade of July 2023 in Kainuu, Finland, where the sun does not fully set for more than 70 days in the summer months. (Photo by Jane Jeffrey/Animal News Agency)

A Nepalese woman pours milk as she offers prayers to the setting Sun on the banks of the Bagmati River during the Chhath Puja festival in Kathmandu, Nepal, Sunday, November 6, 2016. During Chhath, an ancient Hindu festival, rituals are performed to thank the Sun God for sustaining life on earth. (Photo by Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo)

First place, The Beauty of Plants. “There are many stages of lotus growth on display at the Aquatic Gardens, but to come across twotwisted dancing stems of nelumbo nucifera was unexpected and quite magical”. (Photo by Kathleen Furey/The Guardian)

Flocks of seagulls swarm small fishing boats in the first decade of January 2024 like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Colonies of Heuglin’s gulls can be seen almost every morning on the Yamuna River in Delhi, India. (Photo by Raghav Rai Ralhan/Solent News)