40+ Best Wildlife Photos Of 2018 Have Just Been Announced And The Stories Behind Them Are Powerful

Author: Karolina Wv / Source: Bored Panda

The wait is over. Everyone who was enjoying 2017, 2016 and 51 earlier ‘Wildlife Photographer of the Year’ (WPY) competitions has just received this year’s biggest treat. London’s Natural History Museum announced the winners of the 2018 contest, and the images reveal the abundance, beauty, resilience and vulnerability of life on Earth.

The winning photos were chosen from more than 45,000 entries from 95 countries for their artistic composition, technical innovation and truthful interpretation of the natural world. The international jury awarded the grand title to Dutch photographer Marsel van Oosten for his shot, titled “The Golden Couple.” The breathtaking picture features a pair of endangered golden snub-nosed monkeys in central China’s Qin Ling Mountains. “It is a symbolic reminder of the beauty of nature and how impoverished we are becoming as nature is diminished,” Roz Kidman Coz, the chair of the judging panel, said in a press release. “It is an artwork worthy of hanging in any gallery in the world.” Golden snub-nosed monkeys only live in this particular part of China, and their numbers are steadily decreasing, mainly because of habitat loss from commercial logging and firewood collection.

“As we were going through the entries, we just kept coming back to this one,” Roz Kidman Coz added. “It’s almost like a stage set. I think what makes it are the colours and the lighting. These monkeys normally feed in the trees, but somehow Marsel’s managed to catch them on the ground, and he’s carefully thrown a very gentle flash on to the scene to illuminate that amazing fur.

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The photographer told BBC News he was “shocked and honoured” to receive the award. “I am happy that it is with this particular image because it is an endangered species and one that very few people even know exists and it is important that we realise that there are a lot of species on this planet that are under threat.”

Scroll down to check out the winning images from both the adult competition (16 categories) and the young awards (10 years and under, 11–14 years old and 15–17 years old).