Nautilus

These Photos Remind Us Why Conservation Matters

The election of Joe Biden is good news for conservation. It won’t be easy to undo the damage done to environmental laws by the Trump administration, but at least the rectification can begin on a note of celebration. Which is the note we’re sounding by featuring these images, winners of the 2020 BigPicture Natural Photography Competition, sponsored by the California Academy of Sciences. We’re not the first magazine to display the photographs online—the winners were announced in May—but we are delighted to help them reach a wider audience.

Beautiful wildlife photography is now an alarm: the beauty implies desecration, happening in nearly every ecosystem in which wildlife manages to survive. This notion, in fact, inspires the BigPicture competition, and the online magazine, bioGraphic, focused on science and sustainability, where the images first appeared. Each of the images is followed by insights from the photographers and the threats the animals and plants now face, written by the staff of bioGraphic. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Shelter in Place: Grand Prize WinnerAndy Parkinson

To get this intimate shot of a mountain hare () curled up against a Scottish winter storm, Andy Parkinson endured weeks of ferocious cold and wind that drove

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