Winning images of the 2024 BigPicture natural world photography competition
A fox in the sun, fireflies and a brush fire, and trees blanketed with butterflies are among the striking images caught by winners of the California Academy of Sciences’ annual contest. Now in its 11th year, it highlights biodiversity and the many threats our planet faces
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The Forest of the Monarchs – grand prize winner
What looks like sunlit foliage on trees are actually millions of monarch butterflies. The only species that migrates to avoid North America’s winter, they fly up to 3,000 miles south to Mexico’s warm and humid Sierra Madre mountains. The butterflies cluster on oyamel fir trees, cozying up to generate warmth and conserve energy as temperatures dip.Photograph: Jaime Rojo/BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition/California Academy of Sciences
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Underwater Harmony and Chaos – winged life winner
The dramatic hunting of northern gannets (Morus bassanus) sees the birds reach speeds up to 60mph (96km/h) and depths of 21 metres (70ft) as they dive into the water to catch their prey. Following a cluster of fishing vessels off Scotland’s Shetland Islands, the photographer Franco Banfi tracked a colony of the gannets, diving into the dark water to capture the chaos and beauty of their daily fight for food.Photograph: Franco Banfi/BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition/California Academy of Sciences
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Stardust Forest – art of nature winner
Fireflies hold particular cultural significance in Japan, where their emergence marks the changing of the seasons and is thought to be a manifestation of the souls of dead soldiers. The floating light trails captured in this photo from Yamagata, Honshu island, were mostly created by male fireflies, which hover and emit frequent bursts of light when courting mates.Photograph: Kazuaki Koseki/BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition/California Academy of Sciences
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Good Fire – human/nature winner
‘When you hear the words “wildfire” and “California”, many think first of devastation,’ says the photographer Maddy Rifka. Yet for centuries, California’s Indigenous peoples tended the land by igniting frequent, low-intensity burns, mimicking those caused by lightning. By clearing fire-prone brush, these burns encouraged growth of native plants, maintaining biodiversity and protecting water supplies. Here, Steven Saiz, a Hoopa Valley tribal member, coaxes flames to spread through the undergrowth surrounding a Yurok elder’s home.Photograph: Maddy Rifka/BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition/California Academy of Sciences
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In Celebration – landscapes, waterscapes and flora winner
In the tidepools off South Africa’s Cape peninsula, the photographer Geo Cloete captures the symbiosis between the crashing waves and sea anemones: only when there is a chance to feed do these colourful cnidarians bloom, extending their tentacles to ensnare plankton, crabs and tiny fish. As the waves sweep over the pools at high tide, nutrients and other microscopic organisms are delivered to the pool’s intricate food web.Photograph: Geo Cloete/BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition/California Academy of Sciences
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Northern Ghosts – photo story winner
To Peter Mather, finding the Arctic’s transient wildlife feels like trying to pin down a ghost. By leaving motion-activated camera traps in the field for months or years, Mather captured rare images of wildlife in the icy expanses of Alaska’s Arctic coast, including this caribou carcass and an arctic fox. Mather’s images hint at the other harsh reality of life in the Arctic: without adequate conservation efforts and a dramatic slowing of climate breakdown, these animals might become apparitions, too.Photograph: Peter Mather/BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition/California Academy of Sciences
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Beauty of the Desert – terrestrial wildlife winner
The Schokari sand racer is a snake known for its whip-fast speed and agility: their pursuits can reach up to 10mph (16km/h). Here, a sand racer moves through a shrub in north-west India’s Thar desert. Despite its inhospitable climate, the desert is a refuge for a variety of endemic and endangered species, including the critically endangered great Indian bustard, the mugger crocodile and the phog shrub sheltering this sand racer.Photograph: Hema Palan/BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition/California Academy of Sciences
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Tadpole Migration – aquatic life winner
Every summer’s day in the lakes of Vancouver Island, hundreds of western toad tadpoles (Anaxyrus boreas) wriggle their way from the relatively safe depths of the water into the sunlit shallows, where their algae dinner awaits. The veteran underwater photographer Shane Gross had heard of the tadpoles’ migration and was amazed by the numbers he witnessed.Photograph: Gayle Laird/BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition/California Academy of Sciences
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Hopeless – human/nature finalist
This haunting image of an entangled humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) off California captures the grim reality these marine mammals face in the oceans. Decades of aggressive hunting, vessel strikes, disease and entanglement in fishing gear have killed thousands of humpback whales and threaten many cetacean populations worldwide.Photograph: Alvaro Herrero/BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition/California Academy of Sciences
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A Moment in the Sun – terrestrial wildlife finalist
Perched on the cliffs of the Pribilof Islands in Alaska, this blue arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus pribilofensis) basks in the sunlight – a rare occurrence for an archipelago often shrouded in thick fog. Blue arctic foxes are endemic to these remote islands and have adapted over generations to the unique, treeless environment: below the fox lies the entrance to a maze of tunnels that form a den for these secretive mammals.Photograph: Kathleen Borshanian/BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition/California Academy of Sciences
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March of the Spider Orchids – landscapes, waterscapes and flora finalist
Against the moody, rain-soaked backdrop of Western Australia’s southern coast, flowers from a lone white spider orchid emerge from the brush and unfurl. As so many spider orchids are found only along this coast, local officials have promoted recovery plans to protect critically endangered species and help their numbers recover in regions devastated by invasive weeds and animals, wildfire and human activity. These images originally appeared on bioGraphic, an online magazine about nature and regeneration and the official media sponsor for the California Academy of Sciences’ BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition.Photograph: Georgina Steytler/BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition/California Academy of Sciences