Environment

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018 winners

Dream duel

As storm clouds gathered over Belgium's Ardennes forest, the sound of two red deer stags — roaring in competition over females — echoed through the trees. Well matched, neither challenger was giving way, and the contest escalated into a noisy clash of antlers. At last, the stags appeared on the ridge in silhouette, antlers locked.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018 winners

Lounging leopard

Skye Meaker captured Mathoja, a leopard dozing on the branch of a nyala tree. Mathoja's home is Botswana's Mashatu Game Reserve. In Bantu, Mathoja means "the one that walks with a limp." Skye calls her this because she limps from an injury she suffered as a cub. Mathoja is an otherwise healthy 8-year-old.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018 winners

Duck of dreams

On the Varanger Peninsula, on the northern coast of the Barents Sea in Norway, this young photographer captured a quiet moment with a long-tailed duck. Getting close enough to snap the ducks meant an early-morning boat ride. Still bitterly cold in March, eider ducks and long-tailed ducks flew into the harbor as the morning light broke.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018 winners

Pipe owls

Huddled together at the opening of an old waste-pipe, two spotted owlets look into this young photographer's lens. He and his dad spotted the owls when driving in Kapurthala, a city in the Indian state of Punjab. The owlet — less than 20 centimeters (8 inches) tall — popped its head out, followed by the larger female. This image shows a species that has adapted to urban life.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018 winners

Bed of seals

Crabeater seals rest on an ice floe in the Errera Channel at the tip of Antarctica. This seal species is considered to be relatively abundant, and there is no evidence they're in decline. Regardless, they are dependent on sea ice — in short supply in the Antarctic summer — for resting, breeding and avoiding predators. Their name is a misnomer as the seals feed almost exclusively on krill.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018 winners

Mud-rolling mud-dauber

The water hole at Walyormouring Nature Reserve in Western Australia buzzed in the summer heat. These industrious female slender mud-dauber wasps were busy digging egg chambers for their nearby nests. The wasps provision each of the dozen or more cocoon-like nest chambers with the paralyzed bodies of orb‑weaver spiders for their newly hatched larva to eat.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018 winners

Blood thirsty

When seeds and insects dry up on Wolf Island in the Galapagos, sharp-beaked ground finches become vampires. Their sitting targets are Nazca boobies, which thrive here. Finches have a tougher time. Pecking at the booby's feathers with their beaks, they drink blood to survive. Rather than expose eggs and chicks, boobies tolerate it. The blood loss doesn't seem to cause permanent harm.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018 winners

Kuhirwa mourns her baby

This female mountain gorilla in Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable Forest wouldn't give up on her dead baby. Weeks later, she ate what was left of the corpse. Her reactions to bereavement echo responses to death in other species. Elephants stroke the bones of dead family members and dolphins try to keep dead companions afloat. There is evidence that many animals behave in ways that reflects grief.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018 winners

Hell-bent

A northern water snake is clamped tightly in the jaws of this hungry hellbender. In Tennessee's Tellico River, North America's largest aquatic salamander, the hellbender, has declined significantly because habitat degradation. Its presence indicates a healthy freshwater ecosystem. The snake eventually escaped the hellbender's bite.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018 winners

The sad clown

Timbul, a young long-tailed macaque, instinctively puts his hand to his face to try to relieve the discomfort from his mask. His owner is training him for a street show. When he's not training or performing, Timbul lives chained up next to a railway track in Surabaya, on the Indonesian island of Java. Animal-welfare charities work to reduce the suffering of these monkeys.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018 winners

Desert relic

A welwitschia reaches for the sky over the Namib Desert. With a slow growth rate and the largest specimens spanning more than 8 meters (26 feet), these desert survivors can live for more than a 1,000 years. Endemic to Namibia and Angola, welwitschia endure harsh, arid conditions, usually within 150 kilometers (93 miles) of the coast, so they can capture moisture from sea fog.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018 winners

Night flight

Off Florida's Palm Beach, this photographer captured a flying fish at night. By day, these fish are nearly impossible to approach. Although, they are prey for many animals, they have the ability to sprint away from danger, rapidly beating their unevenly forked tails to build enough speed to soar up and out of the water. Spreading their pointed pectoral fins, they can glide for hundreds of meters.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018 winners

Mother defender

A large Alchisme treehopper guards her nymphs as they feed on a nightshade plant in El Jardin de los Suenos reserve in Ecuador. She lays her eggs on a nightshade leaf and shields them. Once the eggs hatch, they develop through five stages and she watches over them for the duration, wielding spines at any attackers she senses or is alerted to by her nymphs' vibrations or pheromones.

Author: Sam Baker

Inside an attempt to live without plastic packaging

Cosmetics with a difference

Berlin now has two shops that sell unpackaged ingredients for making your own cosmetics and cleaning products, and the internet has an endless supply of suggested combinations for soft, sweet-smelling skin. What's not to like?

Inside an attempt to live without plastic packaging

The proof of the pudding...

... because you genuinely could eat it all. That's not to say it would taste good or necessarily be nutritious, but it is testimony to the natural nature of many make-your-own potions, lotions and creams. And not a tube or plastic bottle in sight.

Inside an attempt to live without plastic packaging

Teething problems

As with cosmetics, there are many recipes for homemade toothpaste online. But if that's an (understandably) acquired taste too far, it's possible to get hold of minty tooth tabs either loose or in paper bags. These can be used with a bamboo toothbrush, and if you really want to go for it, complemented with a length of all-natural floss.

Inside an attempt to live without plastic packaging

The hard stuff

Keeping clean doesn't have to involve a row of plastic bottles. Soap, which predates shower gel by donkey's years, has always been widely available. But even solid shampoos and conditioners are becoming easier to get hold of. And for all their hard exterior, they have a soft touch.

Inside an attempt to live without plastic packaging

Bags of potential

Supermarkets still have rolls and rolls of those thin plastic bags for customers to use to carry fruit and veg home. Once there, the vast majority are immediately disposed of. Doesn't make a lot of sense, and even said supermarkets must be cottoning on, because they are also starting to sell cloth bags for the same purpose.

Inside an attempt to live without plastic packaging

Totes to last

And while we are on the subject of bags... Plastic carriers have not been banned in Germany, although some shops have taken it on themselves to stop offering them. It's not as if there are no alternatives. It's just a matter of having them with you when needed.

Inside an attempt to live without plastic packaging

Paper all the way

Alternatives are harder to come by in the world of toilet paper and tissues. Given their destiny, the need to wrap them in plastic reads like one of life's little mysteries. It's for the sake of hygiene, manufacturers have been known to note. Really?

Author: Tamsin Walker