Pangolins in Crisis: Brent Stirton, South Africa; 1st place, Natural world and wildlife. “Pangolins are the world’s most illegally trafficked mammals, with an estimated one million trafficked to Asia in the last 10 years. Their scales are used in traditional Chinese and Vietnamese medicine, and their meat is sold as a high-priced delicacy. As a result, pangolins are listed as critically endangered and anyone who trades or consumes them is breaking the law. This body of work exposes the trade, while exploring aspects of illegality and celebrating the people who are trying to save these animals”. (Photo by Brent Stirton/Sony World Photography Awards 2020)

Yan Mengjie sits on a boat as she poses for photos near Erhai Lake in Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan province, China on June 16, 2019. Erhai is one of China's biggest freshwater lakes and a backdrop to the city of Dali, which drew 47 million visitors last year, more than triple the number in 2010. Hotels and homestays have sprung up along a 31-mile (50-km) stretch of lakeside road to accommodate tourists. But officials ordered some hotels demolished after President Xi Jinping during a 2015 visit called for the lake to be protected. (Photo by Tingshu Wang/Reuters)

In this July 8, 2019, photo, a monkey pulls on the clothes of Saraswati Dangol as she arrives to feed monkeys in the forest near Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu, Nepal. For the past four years, Dangol has been bringing the bread every day to feed the monkeys. As soon as they see her with her white sack, they gather around her, some patiently waiting for their turn while others less patiently snatching the bread from her hands. Many of Dangol's regulars are elderly, or are mother or baby monkeys who are unable to fight for their share of food in the wild. (Photo by Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo)

Girls dressed in “Hanfu”, or Han clothing, prepare for an event to mark the traditional Qixi festival, the Chinese equivalent of Valentine's Day, at a park in Beijing, China, August 7, 2019. Chinese for “Han clothing”, “Hanfu” is based on the idea of donning costumes worn in bygone eras by China's dominant Han ethnicity. Some of the most popular styles are from the Ming, Song and Tang dynasties. Hanfu enthusiasts doubled to two million in 2018 from a year earlier, according to a survey by Hanfu Zixun, a popular community account on the Wechat social media platform. (Photo by Jason Lee/Reuters)

Bristol Museum & Art Gallery representatives on Monday, June 23, 2025 hold an empty frame against Avon Gorge in Bristol, which was painted by JMW Turner in The Rising Squall, Hot Wells, from St Vincent's Rock, Bristol (1792). A fundraising campaign has been launched to bring one of the earliest works by Turner back to the city of Bristol where the artist painted it when he was 17 years old. Bristol Museum & Art Gallery is now keen to acquire the work, which is believed to be the only oil painting Turner made of the city. (Photo by Ben Birchall/PA Images via Getty Images)

A tiger jumps while being trained at the Tiger Temple in Kanchanaburi province, west of Bangkok, Thailand, February 25, 2016. Thailand's controversial Tiger Temple, dogged for years by talk that it supplies the black market and mistreats its animals, is fighting to keep the big cats after wildlife authorities rejected a bid to extend a zoo licence that expired in 2013. The Buddhist temple, home to more than 100 tigers, has been investigated for suspected links to wildlife trafficking and wildlife activists have accused it of illegal breeding of the animals. Thai wildlife authorities have sent ten of the temple's tigers to a wildlife sanctuary. But the temple, which bills itself as a wildlife sanctuary, has denied links to illegal trafficking, and wants to hold on to its tigers. (Photo by Chaiwat Subprasom/Reuters)

Elephant polo players in action during the King's Cup Elephant Polo event 2016 final between teams King Power (blue) and The Elephant Story, in Bangkok, Thailand, March 13, 2016. Team King Power won the annual charity event, which is now in its 14th edition. This year's edition involved 18 elephants brought from tourist trekking camps in Pattaya as well as some unemployed in Surin, and a total of 10 teams encompassing over 40 players, in this event directed at raising funds to improve the lives of elephants and elephant conservation. (Photo by Diego Azubel/EPA)

A girl rides a donkey as another walks by at the Shawqaba camp for internally displaced people who were forced to leave their villages by the war in Yemen's northwestern province of Hajjah March 12, 2016. In northwest Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Middle East, about 400 families uprooted by the war have been stuck in the Shawqaba camp in Hajjah province for the past year. Residents live in poorly built huts that protect them neither from summer heat nor winter cold in a camp that lacks the most basic services. (Photo by Abduljabbar Zeyad/Reuters)