Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2020 winners announced

The 2020 photographer of the year is Sergey Gorshkov, from Russia, who captivated the jury with a stunning image of an Amur tigress embracing the trunk of a Manchurian fir tree in far eastern Russia. Amur tigers, also called Siberian tigers, are only found in this region of the country — it took the Gorshov 11 months to capture this moment with hidden cameras.

Who doesn't love a good monkey photo? The jury was smitten by Mogens Trolle's photo of this young proboscis monkey enjoying the sunlight; it won best animal portrait. Proboscis monkeys are endangered and can only be found on the Southeast Asian island of Borneo and nearby islands. This young male's signature nose will grow so big, it will hang over his mouth and may have to be pushed aside to eat.

Deciding whose photos are best is no easy feat — the jury sifted through 49,000 photos by amateur and expert photographers from around the world. It's the first time in the competition's 56-year history that the winners were announced online in a livestream broadcast. Songda Cai won the best under water photo category for her shot of this tiny squid, shimmering in gold.

The competition aims to highlight unique animal species around the world, like this rare and endangered Manduriacu frog, found only in a small region of Ecuador. Photographer Jaime Culebras captured the frog clinging to a branch during a downpour — and won the category for behavior of reptiles and amphibians. Illegal mining activities threaten the area where the frog resides.

The power of the natural world is on full display in this photo of Mount Etna by Luciano Gaudenzio, which won the earth's environments category. All competition-winning shots will be exhibited at London's Natural History Museum from October 16, 2020, to June 6, 2021. The organizers hope it will provide an opportunity for audiences to pause, reflect and advocate for our planet.

In this image by Paul Hilton, a young macaque is chained to a cage in Bali's bird market after being taken from the wild and sold as a pet. Hilton won the wildlife photojournalist story award for his coverage of this cruel trade. Competition winners often focus on human impact on the natural world; the macaque can legally be sold, often ending up in horrid conditions.

This year's young grand title winner, for photographers aged 15-17, was Liina Heikkinen, from Finland, who captured a young fox feasting on a goose, while hiding away from his siblings, unwilling to share. "A sense of furtive drama and frantic urgency enlivens this image, drawing us into the frame … A great natural history moment captured perfectly," said jury member Shekar Dattatri.

The future is bright for photographer Sam Sloss, whose photo of a clownfish, entitled "A mean mouthful," was crowned winner in the 11-14-year-old photographer category. While in Indonesia, Sloss was intrigued by the fish, whose mouth was always open. He later learned it held a "tongue-eating louse" that fed on its body. His image captures different but connected forms of life.

Winning the category for invertebrate behavior, Frank Deschandol's photo captures two different species of wasps entering their nest holes, next-door to one another. These wasp neighbors, which do not normally interact, were captured through the painstaking technical prowess of the photographer who had created a superfast shutter system to snap the shot near his home in Normandy, France.

This photo of a family of Pallas's cats, also called manuls, was taken on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, in northwest China. Working in high altitude, Shanyuan tracked the cats as they descended to 3,800 meters (12,500 feet) in search of food. He set up his camera opposite their lair and caught the kittens' expressions as their mother called them back to safety after seeing a fox lurking nearby.