The British Wildlife Photography awards 2024 announces winners

The winning photo of the 2024 edition of the prestigious "British Wildlife Photography Awards" competition is a football floating off the coast of Dorset. A balloon that brings with it a colony of invasive crustaceans...

ocean drifter: a stark reminder of human impact on nature

“Ocean Drifter” by Ryan Stalker

This year’s winners of the esteemed “British Wildlife Photography Awards 2024” have been revealed, with the top prize going to an image that stands out among over 14,000 entries from photographers around the globe. The winning photo, a football floating off the coast of Dorset in the United Kingdom, has been crowned the pinnacle of this year’s competition.

Ocean Drifter: A Stark Reminder of Human Impact on Nature

The photograph, titled “Ocean Drifter,” captured by Ryan Stalker, serves as a striking example of the human impact on the natural world. The sight of the football floating above a colony of invasive crustaceans, originally from the Tropics, starkly represents misplaced waste.

“Ocean Drifter” by Ryan Stalker

The photographer pondered the journey the ball had undertaken: the crustaceans, specifically maxillopods, which are typically found clinging to rocks and shipwrecks (not footballs), suggest that the ball had traveled through the Tropics before getting lost in the Atlantic, ultimately ending up on the shores of Dorset.

Waste like this, the photographer remarked, can transport potentially dangerous invasive species from one location to another. “These are the dreadful consequences of human impact on the environment!” he stated, highlighting the urgent need for awareness and action in addressing environmental issues.

Source: British Wildlife Photography Awards

In general silence we are erasing the Earth's forests to make room for soybean crops, palm oil and intensive farming. So we are losing our green lungs, precious allies against the climate crisis: we are sabotaging ourselves...

Amazon's critical role in carbon capture and the threat posed by its reduced capacity due to deforestation

©Adriano Gambarini _ WWF-Brazil

Forests provide us with oxygen, host approximately 80% of Earth’s biodiversity, and play a pivotal role in mitigating climate change. However, rather than safeguarding these natural treasures, we’re annihilating them at alarming rates. In the past 30 years alone, the world has lost a staggering 178 million hectares of forests, an area triple the size of France.

This deforestation is primarily to make way for soy, palm oil plantations, and intensive livestock farming, which significantly increase pollutant emissions. Every year, five million hectares of tropical forests are converted, particularly to produce beef, cocoa, rubber, coffee, and timber.

The Amazon faces transformation into savannah

Among the most affected forest ecosystems is the Amazon. Over the last 50 years, 17% of its area has been decimated, transformed into crops or pasture lands.

“If this phenomenon were to affect 20-25% of the Amazon, it is believed that the forest would no longer be able to survive, turning into a shrubby savannah within a few decades,” warns the WWF.

Unfortunately, it’s losing this ability. In various areas, the Earth’s green lung, plagued by deforestation, drought, and fires, emits more carbon than it stores: the net emission is about 300 million tons of carbon a year, equal to that generated by France over the same period. This could trigger chain effects on our planet’s climate as if all the carbon now stored in the Amazon forest were released, the average temperature of the planet would increase by 32°F (0.3°C), making it impossible to achieve the Paris Agreement’s target.

We are complicit in deforestation

What happens on the other side of the world affects us more than we might think. Europe, one of the largest importers of products like coffee, meat, palm oil, and dairy, is responsible for 16% of the global deforestation linked to the international trade of commodities. The Old Continent ranks second, after China, in imports associated with forest devastation.

The regulation covers seven products (soy, palm oil, beef, coffee, wood products, printed products, and rubber) and their derivatives, which from December 30, 2024, will only be allowed on the European market if companies can prove they are not the result of deforestation. This will entail a series of checks through so-called due diligence, where importing companies will have to trace the products back to their production site and throughout the supply chain.

Meanwhile, even on a small scale, we can do something to protect forests. How? By starting to reduce meat consumption and only purchasing food and other products made sustainably and supporting reforestation projects.

Source: World Wildlife Fund

The British Wildlife Photography awards 2024 announces winners

Ocean Drifter: A Stark Reminder of Human Impact on Nature

Forests: our planet’s lungs under siege

The Amazon faces transformation into savannah

We are complicit in deforestation