Memorial to a species Brent Stirton, South Africa Grand title winner 2017 (Also winner of The Wildlife Photojournalist Award: Story category) Canon EOS-1DX + 28mm f2.8 lens; 1/250 sec at f9; ISO 200; flash. The killers were probably from a local community but working to order. Entering the Hluhluwe Imfolozi Game Reserve at night, they shot the black rhino bull using a silencer. Working fast, they hacked off the two horns and escaped before being discovered by the reserve’s patrol. The horns would have been sold to a middleman and smuggled out of South Africa, probably via Mozambique, to China or Vietnam. For the reserve, it was grim news, not least because this is where conservationists bred back from near extinction the subspecies that is now the pre-eminent target for poachers, the southern white rhino. For the photographer, the crime scene was one of more than 30 he visited in the course of covering this tragic story. 

The Winners Of The NHM Wildlife Photography Awards

by Team Nature inFocus

Memorial to a species 

Brent Stirton, South Africa 

Grand title winner 2017 

(Also winner of The Wildlife Photojournalist Award: Story category) 

Canon EOS-1DX + 28mm f2.8 lens; 1/250 sec at f9; ISO 200; flash. 

The killers were probably from a local community but working to order. Entering the Hluhluwe Imfolozi Game Reserve at night, they shot the black rhino bull using a silencer. Working fast, they hacked off the two horns and escaped before being discovered by the reserve’s patrol. The horns would have been sold to a middleman and smuggled out of South Africa, probably via Mozambique, to China or Vietnam. For the reserve, it was grim news, not least because this is where conservationists bred back from near extinction the subspecies that is now the pre-eminent target for poachers, the southern white rhino. For the photographer, the crime scene was one of more than 30 he visited in the course of covering this tragic story.