Nature is a beautiful, brutal place.
The 16 "highly commended" entries in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2020 Awards, run by the Natural History Museum in London, provide colourful — and sometimes shocking — proof of this.
The finalists feature everything from endangered species in Vietnam to out-of-control forest fires in Brazil. Some are beautifully-captured vignettes of life in the animal kingdom, while others provide evidence of the devastating impact human beings are having on the earth.
The winners will be announced on Oct. 13, but it'll be a hard task for the judges. Here are the finalists:
A grey reef shark cruising alongside molluscs over the Fakarava Atoll, in French Polynesia.
Credit: laurent ballesta
Tall Araucaria trees piercing through a beech forest in Chile's Araucanía region.
Credit: Andrea Pozzi
A squirrel makes its escape from a pair of Ural owls in a forest on the Japanese island of Hokkaido.
Credit: Makoto Ando
An encounter with an endangered red-shanked douc langur near Vietnam's Son Tra Nature Reserve.
Credit: Arshdeep Singh
An out of control forest fire in Maranhão state, northeastern Brazil.
Credit: Charlie Hamilton James
A hippopotamus in the drought-stricken Mara River, in Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve.
Credit: JoseFragozo
Two foxes tussle over a dead rat in a North London allotment.
Credit: Matthew Maran
A large male gharial provides a raft for his offspring in the National Chambal Sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh, northern India.
Credit: Dhritiman Mukherjee
A brown bear snatching a salmon in Alaska’s Katmai National Park.
Credit: Hannah Vijayan
Two possums hiding beneath the roof of a holiday park shower block in Yallingup, Western Australia.
Credit: Gary Meredith
A large wandering spider devouring the egg of a giant glass frog in Manduriacu Reserve, northwestern Ecuador.
Credit: Jaime Culebras
A pair of Atlantic puffins, captured on the Farne Islands.
Credit: Evie Easterbook
Yellow-billed choughs on the Alpstein Massif of the Swiss Alps.
Credit: Alessandra Meniconzi
A section of Mildred Lake Tar Mine in Northern Alberta, Canada — an area that used to be boreal forest.
Credit: Garth Lenz
The dark reality of the bushmeat market, taken at the Tomohon Market in northern Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Credit: Quentin Martinez
A memorial to the albatrosses caught by the longlines of Japanese tuna-fishing boats of the coast of South Africa.
Credit: Thomas P Peschak
If you happen to be in London, the images will be displayed in an exhibition at London's Natural History Museum from Friday, Oct. 16.
