© Tim Laman/Wildlife Photographer of the Year, The Wildlife Photojournalist Award
By Niall Firth
YOU need a head for heights to survive in the jungle. The orangutan scaling this dizzyingly high tree is searching for figs – and he knows this is a good source.
US photographer Tim Laman took this vertigo-inducing photo in Gunung Palung National Park in western Borneo, and won this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition for it.
To take it, Laman used ropes to climb the 30-metre-high tree and then spent three days rigging up GoPro cameras, which he triggered remotely when he spotted an orangutan hunting for food. The tree is wrapped by a strangler fig, which germinated in the tree’s canopy and then wound its roots down the trunk. Because orangutans carry a mental map of where the best fruiting trees are, Laman knew that a male he had previously seen nearby might well return.
He was in luck, and captured this wide-angle shot as the ape shimmied up the fig plant’s roots, high above the jungle canopy.
Figs are a vital food for the orangutans on Borneo, which are now critically endangered. Poachers kill an estimated 2000 Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) every year, while illegal logging and uncontrolled forest fires mean they are rapidly running out of habitable jungle. The number of Bornean orangutans fell by more than 60 per cent between 1950 and 2010, and their numbers are predicted to fall by a further 22 per cent by 2025.
More from the shortlist
© Nayan Khanolkar/Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Nayan Khanolkar
The alley cat
Winner of urban photographs
A leopard stalks the back alleys of the Aarey Milk Colony suburb in Mumbai, India, which borders the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, where the big cats live. The Warli people in the area live side-by-side with the leopards and pictures of them decorate their homes. Khanolkar spent four months waiting to get this shot.
Tony Wu
Winner of underwater photographs
Thousands of two-spot red snappers spawn around Palau in the western Pacific Ocean. Fish fill the water with sperm and eggs, which invariably attract predators.
© Paul Hilton/Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Paul Hilton
The pangolin pit
Winner of The Wildlife Photojournalist Award: Single image
Around 4000 defrosting pangolins from a huge seizure carried out by the Indonesian police and the World Conservation Society. A further 96 live pangolins were also discovered, as well as $1.8m worth of pangolin scales and 24 bear paws. The animals were on their way to China and Vietnam to be used in traditional medicine or for the exotic-meat trade. Pangolins have become the world’s most trafficked animals and are now critically endangered.
© Rudi Sebastian/Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Rudi Sebastian
The sand canvas
Winner of Details category
It helps to understand the scale of this image when you know it was taken from above, with the photographer in a small aeroplane. It captures the strange patterns of sediment and algae that are left behind on the white sand of Brazil’s Lençóis Maranhenses National Park after the rains come. In the dry season, sand from the coast is blown by powerful Atlantic winds to create giant crescent-shaped dunes up to 40 metres high. But when it rains, lagoons form and streams carrying sediment from the distant rainforest decorate the sand with brown and black streaks.
Wildlife Photographer of the Year is on show at Natural History Museum, London, from 21 October 2016 to 10 September 2017
This article appeared in print under the headline “Ape takes root”
No comments:
Post a Comment