15 winners from Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017

19 October 2017

Photojournalist Brent Stirton has won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 title for his compelling image Memorial to a species, which frames a recently shot and de-horned black rhino in South Africa’s Hluhluwe Imfolozi Game Reserve.

Memorial to a species
Brent Stirton, South Africa
Grand title winner 2017
(Also winner of The Wildlife Photojournalist Award: Story category)
The killers were probably from a local community but working to order. Entering the Hluhluwe Imfolozi Game Reserve at night, they shot the black rhino bull using a silencer. Working fast, they hacked off the two horns and escaped before being discovered by the reserve’s patrol. The horns would have been sold to a middleman and smuggled out of South Africa, probably via Mozambique, to China or Vietnam. For the reserve, it was grim news, not least because this is where conservationists bred back from near extinction the subspecies that is now the pre-eminent target for poachers, the southern white rhino. For the photographer, the crime scene was one of more than 30 he visited in the course of covering this tragic story. Canon EOS-1DX + 28mm f2.8 lens; 1/250 sec at f9; ISO 200; flash. — Memorial to a species Brent Stirton, South Africa Grand title winner 2017 (Also winner of The Wildlife Photojournalist Award: Story category) Canon EOS-1DX + 28mm f2.8 lens; 1/250 sec at f9; ISO 200; flash.

Once the most numerous rhino species, black rhinos are now critically endangered due to poaching and the illegal international trade in rhino horn, one of the world’s most corrupt illegal wildlife networks.

For the photographer, the crime scene was one of more than thirty he visited in the course of covering this tragic story.

Natural History Museum Director Sir Michael Dixon says ‘Brent’s image highlights the urgent need for humanity to protect our planet and the species we share it with.’

‘The black rhino offers a sombre and challenging counterpart to the story of ‘Hope’ our blue whale. Like the critically endangered black rhinoceros, blue whales were once hunted to the brink of extinction, but humanity acted on a global scale to protect them. This shocking picture of an animal butchered for its horns is a call to action for us all.’

Crab surprise
Justin Gilligan, Australia
Winner 2017, Behaviour: Invertebrates
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Out of the blue, an aggregation of giant spider crabs the size of a football field wandered past. Known to converge in their thousands elsewhere in Australian waters – probably seeking safety in numbers before moulting – such gatherings were unknown in Mercury Passage off the east coast of Tasmania. Justin was busy documenting a University of Tasmania kelp transplant experiment and was taken completely by surprise. A single giant spider crab can be hard to spot – algae and sponges often attach to its shell, providing excellent camouflage – but there was no missing this mass march-past, scavenging whatever food lay in their path on the sandy sea floor. ‘About 15 minutes later, I noticed an odd shape in the distance, moving among the writhing crabs,’ says Justin. It was a Maori octopus that seemed equally delighted with the unexpected bounty. — Crab surprise Justin Gilligan, Australia Winner 2017, Behaviour: Invertebrates

Australian photographer Justin Gilligan was the winner of the behaviour: invertebrates category, with a stunning image of a Maori octopus feasting on a massive aggregation of giant spider crabs off the coast of Tasmania. A similar image bagged Gilligan the ANZANG nature title earlier this year.

The good life, Daniël Nelson, The Netherlands, Grand title winner 2017, Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year, (Also winner of the 15-17 years old category). Daniël met Caco in the forest of Odzala National Park in the Republic of Congo. A three‑hour trek through dense vegetation with skilled trackers led him to where the 16‑strong Neptuno family was feeding and to a close encounter with one of the few habituated groups of western lowland gorillas. In the wet season they favour the plentiful supply of sweet fruit, and here Caco is feasting on a fleshy African breadfruit. Caco is about nine years old and preparing to leave his family. He is putting on muscle, becoming a little too bold and is often found at the fringe of the group. He will soon become a solitary silverback, perhaps teaming up with other males to explore and, with luck, starting his own family in eight to ten years’ time. Western lowland gorillas are critically endangered, threatened by illegal hunting for bushmeat. — The good life, Daniël Nelson, The Netherlands, Grand title winner 2017, Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year, (Also winner of the 15-17 years old category).

Daniël Nelson took the award for Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 with his charismatic portrait of a young western lowland gorilla from the Republic of Congo, lounging on the forest floor whilst feeding on fleshy African breadfruit. Daniël’s image captures the inextricable similarity between wild apes and humans, and the importance of the forest on which they depend.

The two images were selected from 16 category winners, depicting the incredible diversity of life on our planet, from displays of rarely seen animal behaviour to hidden underwater worlds. Images from professional and amateur photographers are selected by a panel of industry-recognised professionals for their originality, artistry and technical complexity.

Beating almost 50,000 entries from 92 countries, Brent’s image will be on show with 99 other images selected by an international panel of judges at the fifty-third Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition.

Contemplation
Peter Delaney, Ireland/South Africa
Winner 2017, Animal Portraits
Totti couldn’t have tried harder. For more than an hour, he posed, gestured and called to entice one particular female down from the canopy, but nothing worked. The object of his desire ignored him. Peter, too, was frustrated. He had spent a long, difficult morning tracking the chimpanzees – part of a troop of some 250 – through Uganda’s Kibale National Park. It was humid, the ground was wet and the dense undergrowth meant that, whenever he did catch up with the chimpanzees, all he got was tantalizing glimpses as they swung from tree to tree. ‘Photographing in a rainforest with dim light and splashes of sunlight means your exposure settings are forever changing. Keeping my camera at its optimum ISO setting meant low shutter speeds, and as the park authorities don’t allow tripods and monopods, getting a sharp image with a hand‑held camera was a challenge,’ he says. — Contemplation Peter Delaney, Ireland/South Africa Winner 2017, Animal Portraits.

Giant gathering
Tony Wu, USA
Winner 2017, Behaviour: Mammals
Dozens of sperm whales mingled noisily off Sri Lanka’s northeast coast, stacked as far down as Tony could see. This was part of something special – a congregation of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of social units, like a kind of gathering of the clans. Sperm whales are intelligent, long-lived and gregarious, and groups play, forage, interact and communicate in different ways and have distinctive cultures. Aggregations like this could be a critical part of their rich, social lives but are rarely reported. Some two thirds of the sperm whale population was wiped out during the peak of industrialized whaling in the twentieth century. — Giant gathering Tony Wu, USA Winner 2017, Behaviour: Mammals.

The grip of the gulls, Ekaterina Bee, Italy, Winner 2017, 10 years and under Like all her family, five-and-a-half-year-old Ekaterina is fascinated by nature, and she has also been using a camera since she was four years old. But on the boat trip off the coast of central Norway, her focus was not on the white‑tailed sea eagles that the others were photographing but on the cloud of herring gulls that followed the small boat as it left the harbour. They were after food, and as soon as Ekaterina threw them some bread, they surrounded her. At first she was slightly scared by their boldness and beaks but soon became totally absorbed in watching and photographing them, lost in the noise, wingbeats and colours of feet and beaks in the whirl of white. — The grip of the gulls, Ekaterina Bee, Italy, Winner 2017.

Polar pas de deux
Eilo Elvinger, Luxembourg
Winner 2017, Black and white
From her ship, anchored in the icy waters off Svalbard, in Arctic Norway, Eilo spotted a polar bear and her two-year-old cub in the distance, slowly drawing closer. Polar bears are known as hunters, mainly of seals – they can smell prey from nearly a kilometre (more than half a mile) away – but they are also opportunists. Nearing the ship, they were diverted to a patch of snow soaked in leakage from the vessel’s kitchen and began to lick it. ‘I was ashamed of our contribution to the immaculate landscape’, says Eilo, ‘and of how this influenced the bears’ behaviour.’ — Polar pas de deux Eilo Elvinger, Luxembourg Winner 2017, Black and white.

Palm-oil survivors
Aaron ‘Bertie’ Gekoski, UK/USA
Winner 2017, Wildlife Photojournalist: Single image
In eastern Sabah, on the island of Borneo, three generations of Bornean elephants edge their way across the terraces of an oil-palm plantation being cleared for replanting. Palm oil is a lucrative global export, and in the Malaysian state of Sabah, where the majority of rainforest has already been logged (only 8 per cent of protected intact forest remains), the palm-oil industry is still a major driver of deforestation, squeezing elephants into smaller and smaller pockets of forest. Increasingly they wander into oil-palm plantations to feed, where they come into conflict with humans, with elephants being shot or poisoned. — Palm-oil survivors Aaron ‘Bertie’ Gekoski, UK/USA Winner 2017, Wildlife Photojournalist: Single image.

Tapestry of life
Dorin Bofan, Romania
Winner 2017, Plants and fungi
It was a quiet morning with flat light as Dorin stood alone on the shore of the fjord. He was contemplating the immense landscape bounding Hamnøy in the Lofoten Islands, Norway, when here and there, the clouds parted, allowing shafts of sunlight to fall on to the great walls of metamorphic rock, lighting up the swathes of vegetation coating the canyon and its slopes. The mountains here rise steeply from the sea – a sheer drop of 200 metres (660 feet) in some places – yet mountain birches manage to gain a foothold, some clinging to existence in the most precipitous spots. — Tapestry of life Dorin Bofan, Romania Winner 2017, Plants and fungi.

The ancient ritual
Brian Skerry, USA
Winner 2017, Behaviour: Amphibians and Reptiles
Like generations before her, the leatherback turtle shifts her considerable weight with her outsized, strong front flippers and moves steadily back to the ocean. Leatherbacks are the largest, deepest-diving and widest-ranging sea turtles, the only survivors of an evolutionary lineage that diverged from other sea turtles 100–150 million years ago. Much of their lives are spent at sea, shrouded in mystery. When mature, their leathery shells now averaging 1.6 metres (5 feet 3 inches) long, females return to the shores where they themselves hatched to lay their own eggs. Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge on St Croix, in the US Virgin Islands, provides critical nesting habitat, successfully managed for decades. Elsewhere, leatherbacks are not so lucky, threatened primarily by fisheries bycatch as well as factors including human consumption, coastal development and climate change. — The ancient ritual Brian Skerry, USA Winner 2017, Behaviour: Amphibians and Reptiles.

The incubator bird
Gerry Pearce, UK/Australia
Winner 2017, Behaviour: Birds
Most birds incubate their eggs with their bodies. Not so the Australian brush turkey, one of a handful of birds – the megapodes – that do it with an oven. Only the males oversee incubation. In this case, a male had chosen to create his nest‑mound near Gerry’s home in Sydney, bordering Garigal National Park. It took a month to build, out of leaves, soil and other debris, at which point it was more than a metre high – mounds used year after year can be more than 4 metres (13 feet) wide and 2 metres (6 feet 7 inches) high. The brush turkey then invited a succession of females to mate with him. If he and his mound were to their liking, they would lay a clutch of eggs in the mound. — The incubator bird Gerry Pearce, UK/Australia Winner 2017, Behaviour: Birds.

The ice monster
Laurent Ballesta, France
Winner 2017, Earth’s Environments
Laurent and his expedition team had been silenced by the magnitude of the ice blocks – mountainous pieces of the ice shelf – awed in the knowledge that only 10 per cent of their volume is ever visible above the surface. The dive team were working out of the French Dumont d’Urville scientific base in east Antarctica, recording with film and photography the impact of global warming. Ice shelves in some parts of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet are melting faster than scientists had previously assumed, threatening a movement of land ice into the sea and raising sea levels dramatically. When Laurent spotted this relatively small iceberg, he saw the chance to realize a long-held ambition – to show for the first time the underwater part. — The ice monster Laurent Ballesta, France Winner 2017, Earth’s Environments.

The night raider
Marcio Cabral, Brazil
Winner 2017, Animals in Their Environment
It was the start of the rainy season, but though the night was humid, there were no clouds, and under the starry sky, the termite mounds now twinkled with intense green lights. For three seasons, Marcio had camped out in Brazil’s cerrado region, on the vast treeless savannah of Emas National Park, waiting for the right conditions to capture the light display. It happens when winged termites take to the sky to mate. — The night raider Marcio Cabral, Brazil Winner 2017, Animals in Their Environment.