This Rhino Is a Photo Award Winner—But a Loser of So Much More
Images from the California Academy of Sciences’ annual photography contest give us a big-picture look at the natural world.

“White Rhino,” photographed by Maroesjka Lavigne in Etosha National Park, Namibia
What on earth have you photographed?
This open-ended question, asked annually by the BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition, invites predictably diverse submissions: A leopard prowling around Mumbai’s Aarey Milk Colony, a Chilean volcano’s violent eruption, and the surprisingly peaceful relationship between a blackfish and a venomous Portuguese man o’ war, just to name a few.
But out of some 5,000 images, it was White Rhino, by Maroesjka Lavigne of Ghent, Belgium, that snagged the grand prize. “I love the camouflage and the texture—you can almost feel the cracked mud,” wildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas, who chaired the panel of expert judges, said in a press release. “This photograph also has a poignant, ghostly quality that reflects how rhinos are slipping away before our eye.”
For the last six years, the number of rhinos poached for their horns has been climbing, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature says poachers killed 1,338 of the endangered animals in 2015. The photo competition hopes that capturing the natural world’s incredible variety on film will inspire us to save it in real life.
The “BigPicture” exhibit, on display at the California Academy of Sciences through October 30, features 48 photographs from 27 countries. The judges this year awarded prizes in seven categories: Human/Nature; Terrestrial Wildlife; Landscapes, Waterscapes, and Flora; Aquatic Life; Winged Life; Art of Nature; and Photo Essay: Coral Reef. Explore the prize-winning images below.







This article was originally published on onEarth, which is no longer in publication. onEarth was founded in 1979 as the Amicus Journal, an independent magazine of thought and opinion on the environment. All opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or positions of NRDC. This article is available for online republication by news media outlets or nonprofits under these conditions: The writer(s) must be credited with a byline; you must note prominently that the article was originally published by NRDC.org and link to the original; the article cannot be edited (beyond simple things such grammar); you can’t resell the article in any form or grant republishing rights to other outlets; you can’t republish our material wholesale or automatically—you need to select articles individually; you can’t republish the photos or graphics on our site without specific permission; you should drop us a note to let us know when you’ve used one of our articles.
Missing for a Century, the California Condor Flies Over Yurok Ancestral Lands Again
Facing Down the Ivory Sellers, Pangolin Poachers, and Giraffe Traders
Alaska’s Tongass National Forest Gets the Protections It Deserves