Natural Environment Blog

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that a shortlist had been chosen for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2008 hosted by the Natural History Museum in London and BBC Wildlife Magazine.

The winners have now been announced for this year’s competition.

The photos came under the following categories:

Overall winners

• Wildlife Photographer of the Year
• Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Special awards

• Gerald Durrell Award for Endangered Wildlife
• One Earth Award

Adult awards 

• Animal Behaviour: Birds
• Animal Behaviour: Mammals
• Animal Behaviour: All Other Animals
• The Underwater World
• Animal Portraits
• In Praise of Plants
• Urban and Garden Wildlife
• Wild Places
• Animals in their Environment
• Nature in Black and White
• Creative Visions of Nature

Junior awards

• Ten years and under
• 11-14 years old
• 15-17 years old

You can click on the links above to go directly to the relevant photos.

Alternatively, you can view the winning photos on the Natural History Museum website or the New Scientist website.

I recently wrote about the Prince’s Rainforest Project website - the website for Prince Charles’ Rainforest Project. As mentioned in that article, the main aim of the project is to make the rainforests “more valuable alive than dead”.

I just received the latest newsletter from the website announcing some of  the latest developments for the project.  One of these is that the project has now been added as a category in the Sony World Photography Awards for 2009. The project partnered with Sony Europe and the Sony World Photography Awards (SWPA) to create a new prize category for the awards - The Prince’s Rainforest Award.

The photography awards are one of the largest photographic events in the world today, so this will almost certainly raise the profile of The Prince’s Rainforest Project.

The awards have two categories - amateur and professional. The winner of the professional category will receive funding from Sony to photograph the rainforests of the world. A selection of the amateur category will have their photographs displayed in Cannes during the awards festival. The photos will also be used by the Prince’s Rainforest Project throughout the year.

The World Photography Festival runs in Cannes from the 14th – 19th of April. The theme for 2009’s festival is The Environment.

Submissions are now open, so if you’re interested in participating, check out the official SWPA website.