A picture of a dead black rhino with its horns hacked off has won a photographer the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year award.
Brent Stirton won the award for his image Memorial to a Species, which was taken at a game reserve in South Africa.
He was revealed as the winner at a ceremony at the Natural History Museum in London, which runs the competition. The photojournalist beat almost 50,000 entries from 92 countries.
His image will go on show alongside 99 other photographs at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition which opens on Friday October 20 at the central London museum.
Other photographs on show included a laughing gorilla, a buried red fox and sperm whales swimming in the ocean.
Describing the winning picture, Judge Roz Kidman Cox said: ‘It’s symbolic of one of the most wasteful, cruel and unnecessary environmental crimes, one that needs to provoke the greatest public outcry.’
A Black Rhino Bull was killed for its horns at Hluhluwe Umfolozi Game Reserve in South Africa. It is suspected that the killers came from a local community approximately 5 kilometers away. Brent Stirton won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award for the image, called Memorial to a Species
These sperm whales had just emerged from milling around in a gigantic cluster in the Indian Ocean, off the northeast corner of Sri Lanka. Sperm whales are listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List
This is one of the 100 images which will be on show at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition which opens on Friday October 20 at the central London museum
Daniël Nelson won the award for Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 with his charismatic portrait of a young western lowland gorilla from the Republic of Congo, lounging on the forest floor whilst feeding on African breadfruit
This image features a very unusual encounter between an aggregation of spider crabs and a predatory octopus. This very rare and exciting encounter took place off Maria Island, Tasmania. Photographer Justin Gilligan said: ‘When I saw the octopus in the distance, I couldn’t believe my luck’
A female red fox was spotted hunting along a road in the Lamar Valley area of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. Photographer Ashleigh Scully said: ‘I captured the whole series, and once she landed, I recomposed and took a couple of shots of her buried deep in the snow. She stayed like this for about 10 seconds’
A Leatherback Turtle crawls back to the sea after nesting under moonlight at Sandy Point on the island of St Croix in the US Virgin Islands, a location that has been designated as critical habitat for this endangered species
This adult male Chimpanzee lies on the forest floor with is hands clasped behind his head. He spent an hour trying to coax a female to join him from the canopy above in Chibale, Uganda
A family of elephants were photographed making their way together in a line was captured by photographed Aaron Gekoski
Photographer Eilo Elvinger captured this image of polar bears walking next to each other and entered the image into the Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards
A gull was photographed staring right into the camera lens (left), while a a jellyfish was seen being ‘held’ by a creature in the sea (right)
This male brush turkey was photographed while it dedicated hours to tend to its mound and the photograph was entered into the prestigious competition
An image taken a village in Lofoten Islands, Norway. Photographer Dorin Bofan said the bright colours ‘decorate the landscape, grow on their slopes, some clinging to existence in the most precipitous spots’