Life Under Dead Wood, Winner, Young Photographer of the Year and 15-17 Years category: A Springtail and slime mold

“The Swarm of Life,” a remarkable photograph (below) shining a light on the magical underwater world of western toad tadpoles by Canadian photographer Shane Gross, has been awarded the coveted title of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2024.

Selected from a record-breaking 59,228 entries from 117 countries and territories, the overall winners and the 18 category winners of this prestigious competition were revealed at an awards ceremony by London’s Natural History Museum.

Celebrating its 60th year, the flagship Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition featuring 100 awarded images will open on October 11 at London’s Natural History Museum.

The overall winning image was captured by Canadian Marine Conservation Photojournalist Shane Gross while snorkelling for several hours through carpets of lily pads in Cedar Lake on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

“The jury was captivated by the mix of light, energy and connectivity between the environment and the tadpoles,” said jury chairperson Kathy Moran. “We were equally excited by the addition of a new species to the Wildlife Photographer of the Year archive. Over the last few years, the competition has highlighted environments and species that are often overlooked yet provoke the same wonder and delight when shared as the more typically photographed wildlife and wild places.”

The Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2024 was awarded to Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas from Germany for his close-up image “Life Under Dead Wood” (above) depicting the fruiting bodies of slime mold on the right and a tiny springtail on the left.

The two Grand Title winners were selected from 18 category winners showcasing the wonder and wealth of biodiversity on our planet while also shining a light on the numerous challenges wildlife across the globe faces today.

“Wildlife Photographer of the Year’s longevity is a testament to the vital importance and growing appreciation of our natural world,” noted Doug Gurr, Director of the Natural History Museum. “We are delighted to feature such inspiring images in this year’s portfolio—these are photographs that not only encourage further wildlife conservation efforts, but that spark the creation of real advocates for our planet on a global scale.”

To honor the 60th anniversary of Wildlife Photographer of the Year, this year’s exhibition spotlights past Grand Title winners across the competition’s history and includes photographs, trophies and camera technology highlights that encompass the competition’s 60 years of revealing nature’s stories.

The Swarm of Life, Winner, Wetlands: The Bigger Picture category; Western toad tadpoles among lily pads in a lake on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada

Shane Gross looks under the surface layer of lily pads as a mass of western toad tadpoles swim past in Cedar Lake on British Columbia’s Vancouver Island in Canada.

Shane snorkeled in the lake for several hours through carpets of lily pads. This prevented any disturbance of the fine layers of silt and algae covering the lake bottom, which would have reduced visibility.

Western toad tadpoles swim up from the safer depths of the lake, dodging predators and trying to reach the shallows, where they can feed. A near-threatened species due to habitat destruction and predators, these tadpoles start their transition into toads between four and twelve weeks after hatching—but an estimated 99% of them will not survive to adulthood.

Free as a Bird , Winner, 10 Years and Under Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Alberto Román Gómez contrasts a delicate stonechat bird with a hefty chain.

Watching from the window of his father’s car at the edge of the Sierra de Grazalema Natural Park in Cádiz, Spain, the young photographer found this young bird tricky to photograph as it was quickly flying back and forth, gathering insects.

To Alberto, the stonechat displayed a sense of ownership, as if it were a young guardian overseeing its territory.

This young bird has not yet developed its adult call, which sounds like two stones tapped together. Stonechats tend to prefer open habitats and typically perch on fences.

A Tranquil Moment, Winner, Behaviour: Mammals category

Resting in a quiet place after a morning of photographing birds and leopards in Wilpattu National Park, Sri Lanka, Hikkaduwa Liyanage Prasantha Vinod soon realised he wasn’t alone. A troop of toque macaques was moving through the trees above. Vinod spotted this young monkey sleeping between feeds and framed the peaceful moment.

Toque macaques easily adapt to human foods, and the encroachment of plantations into their habitat has seen an increase in incidents of shooting, snaring and poisoning by farmers trying to preserve their crops.

The Demolition Squad, Winner, Behaviour: Invertebrates category

‘Full of ant’ is how Ingo Arndt described himself after lying next to the ants’ nest for just a few minutes in Hessen, Germany. Ingo watched as the red wood ants carved an already dead beetle into pieces small enough to fit through the entrance to their nest.

Much of the red wood ants’ nourishment comes from honeydew secreted byaphids, but they also need protein. They’re capable of killing insects and other invertebrates much larger than themselves through sheer strength in numbers.

On Watch, Winner, Animal Portraits category

Wearing snowshoes and carrying light camera gear to make his way through snowy forests, John Marriott had been tracking this family group for almost a week in the Canadian Yukon. When fresh tracks led him to the group, he kept his distance to make sure he didn’t disturb them.

Lynx numbers usually reflect the natural population fluctuations of their main prey species, the snowshoe hare. With climate change reducing snow coverage, giving other predators more opportunities to hunt the hares, hare populations may decline, in turn affecting the lynx population.

Wetland Wrestle, Winner, Behaviour: Amphibians and Reptiles category

Karine Aigner recognized the skin of a yellow anaconda as it coils itself around the snout of a yacaré caiman.

The tour group Aigner was leading on the Transpantaneira Highway in Mato Grosso, Brazil, had stopped to photograph some marshdeer when she noticed an odd shape floating in the water. Through binoculars, she quickly recognized the reptiles and watched as they struggled with each other.

Caimans are generalist feeders and will eat snakes. As anacondas get larger, they will include reptiles in their diet. It’s hard to determine who is the aggressor here. On the snake’s back are two tabanids, blood-sucking horseflies known to target reptiles.

Frontier of the Lynx, Winner, Animals in their Environment category

Igor Metelskiy shows a lynx stretching in the early evening sunshine, its body mirroring the undulating wilderness.

The remote location and changing weather conditions made access to this spot and transporting equipment there a challenge. Igor positioned his camera trap near the footprints of potential prey. It took more than six months of waiting to achieve this relaxed image of the elusive lynx.

A survey carried out in 2013 estimated the entire Russian lynx population was around 22,500 individuals, with numbers for the Russian Far East, including those in Primorsky Krai, at 5,890.

Practice Makes Perfect, Winner, Behaviour: Birds category

Jack Zhi enjoys watching a young falcon practicing its hunting skills on a butterfly, above its sea-cliff nest in Los Angeles, California.

Zhi has been visiting this area for the past eight years, observing the constant presence of one of the birds and photographing the chicks. On this day it was a challenge to track the action because the birds were so fast.

Should this young peregrine falcon make it to adulthood, tests have shown it will be capable of stooping, or dropping down on its prey from above, at speeds of more than 186 miles per hour.

Tiger in Town, Winner, Urban Wildlife category

Robin Darius Conz watched a tiger on a hillside against the backdrop of a town where forests once grew in Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu, India.

Conz was following this tiger as part of a documentary team filming the wildlife of the Western Ghats. On this day, he used a drone to observe the tiger explore its territory before it settled in this spot.

The protected areas in the Western Ghats, where tigers are carefully monitored, are some of the most biodiverse landscapes in India and have a stable population of tigers. Outside these areas, where development has created conflict between humans and wildlife, tiger occupancy has declined.

Hope for the Ninu, Winner, Impact Award category

Australian photographer Jannico Kelk won the Adult Impact Award with his image ‘Hope for the Ninu’.

The greater bilby, a small marsupial also referred to as the ninu, was brought to near extinction through predation by introduced foxes and cats. Kelk’s image showcases a greater bilby in a fenced reserve, a method that has eradicated predators so that the greater bilby can thrive.

Kelk spent each morning walking the sand dunes of a conservation reserve in South Australia’s Roxby Downs, searching for footprints that this rabbit-sized marsupial may have left the night before. Finding tracks near a burrow, he set up his camera trap.

The greater bilby has many Aboriginal names, including ninu.

Recording by Hand, Winner, Impact Award

Liwia Pawłowska is fascinated by bird ringing, and has been photographing ringing sessions since she was nine. She says that she hopes her photograph taken in Rgielsko, Greater Poland Voivodeship “helps others to get to know this topic better.”

Volunteers can assist trained staff at bird-ringing sessions, where a bird’s length, sex, condition and age are recorded. Data collected helps scientists to monitor populations and track migratory patterns, aiding conservation efforts.

The Artful Crow , Winner, Natural Artistry category

Jiří Hřebíček creates an impressionistic vision of this perching carrion crow.

Jiří often visits his local Park im Grünen in Basel, Switzerland, as it’s an ideal place to experiment with camera techniques. To create this painterly effect of a sitting carrion crow, Hřebíček deliberately moved his camera in different directions while using a long shutter speed.

Carrion crows are intelligent birds that have successfully adapted to living alongside humans, with gardens and parks providing a regular food supply. In Switzerland, they’re found north of the Alps, with some of the highest concentrations around Basel.

Dolphins of the Forest, Winner,, Photojournalist Story Award

The Amazon river dolphin is one of two freshwater dolphin species living in the Amazon and Orinoco basins. Only this species has evolved to explore the seasonally flooded forest habitat

For his portfolio, Thomas Peschak documents the relationship between endangered Amazon river dolphins in Brazil and Colombia, also known as botos or pink river dolphins, and the people with whom they share their watery home.

The Amazon river dolphin’s relationship with humans is complex. Traditional Amazonian beliefs hold that the dolphins can take on human form, and they are both revered and feared. Others see them as thieves who steal fish from nets and should be killed.

Peschak took these images in areas where local communities are creating opportunities for tourists to encounter the dolphins. This brings another set of problems: When they’re fed by humans, the dolphins become unhealthy and younger individuals fail to learn to hunt for themselves.

The Serengeti of the Sea, Winner, Rising Star Portfolio Award

Like ‘Rubies and Gold’, these tube-snout fish eggs will fade in color as the embryos develop. But for now, they sparkle like gems next to the kelp’s gold, glowing, gas-filled buoyancy aids. The green serrated edges of the kelp fronds complete the simple composition.

Sage Ono explores the abundant life around the giant kelp forests in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary in California.

Inspired by stories told by his grandfather, a retired marine biologist, and by a photograph of a larval cusk eel, Ono acquired a compact underwater camera and decided to take up underwater photography.

Here, it’s the submerged world of the bay’s forests of giant kelp, the largest of all seaweeds, and the diversity of life they contain.

An Evening Meal, Winner, 11 - 14 Years Young Photographer category

Parham Pourahmad watches as the last rays of the setting sun illuminate a young Cooper’s hawk eating a squirrel.

Over a single summer, Pourahmad visited Ed R. Levin County Park in California most weekends to take photographs. He wanted to showcase the variety of wildlife living within a busy metropolitan city, and to illustrate that “nature will always be wild and unpredictable.”

The Cooper’s hawk is a common species across southern Canada, the U.S. and central Mexico, where it inhabits mature and open woodlands. These adaptable birds also live in urban spaces where there are tall trees to nest in, and bird feeders that attract smaller birds that they can prey on.

Under the Waterline, Winner, Underwater category

Matthew Smith carefully photographed a curious leopard seal beneath the Antarctic ice in Paradise Harbour, Antarctica.

Smith used a specially-made extension he designed for the front of his underwater housing to get this split image. It was his first encounter with a leopard seal. The young seal made several close, curious passes. “When it looked straight into the lens barrel,” he recalled, “I knew I had something good.”

Though leopard seals are widespread and abundant, overfishing, retreating sea ice and warming waters mean that krill and penguins, their main food sources, are both in decline.

A Diet of Deadly Plastic, Winner, Oceans: The Bigger Picture category

Justin Gilligan creates a mosaic from the 403 pieces of plastic found inside the digestive tract of a dead flesh-footed shearwater.

Justin has been documenting Adrift Lab’s work for several years, often joining them on beach walks at dawn to collect dead chicks. The team brings together biologists from around the world to study the impact of plastic pollution on marine ecosystems.

Worryingly, the diet of flesh-footed shearwaters that nest on Lord Howe Island in New South Wales, Australia, is increasingly seasoned with plastic waste drifting in the oceans, including fledglings.

The team, including a Natural History Museum scientist, discovered it causes scarring to the lining of the digestive tract, a condition called plasticosis.

In 2023, they retrieved the greatest number of plastic pieces ever recorded from this individual (403 pieces; weighing 41.9 grams).

Old Man of the Glen, Winner, Plants and Fungi category.

Fortunato Gatto comes across a gnarled old birch tree adorned with pale ‘old man’s beard’ lichens.

Gatto often visits the Glen Affric ancient pinewoods in the Scotish highlands, alone to lose himself in its intricate, chaotic, timeless beauty. The pale ‘old man’s beard’ lichens indicate that it’s an area of minimal air pollution.

Glen Affric is home to the highest concentration of native trees in the U.K.,making it a vital ecosystem. Analysis of pollen preserved in the layered sediments shows that the forest has stood here for at least 8,300 years.

Dusting for New Evidence, Winner, Photojournalism category

Britta Jaschinski looks on as a crime scene investigator from London’s Metropolitan Police dusts for prints on a confiscated tusk at Heathrow Airport.

Jaschinski spent time at the CITES Border Force department where confiscated animal products are tested. Newly developed magnetic powder allows experts to obtain fingerprints from ivory up to 28 days after it was touched, increasing the chances of identifying those involved in its illegal trade.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare has distributed more than 200 specially-created kits to border forces from 40 countries. They have been instrumental in four cases that resulted in 15 arrests.