The week in wildlife – in pictures

Igneada Floodplain Forests national park in western Turkey is home to a wide variety of ecosystems and animal habitats.

An Egyptian gosling and its parent in a meadow in Schwetzingen, Germany. These geese were considered sacred by the ancient Egyptians.

Brown hares carry out their ‘boxing’ mating ritual on farmland in the Tweed basin near Kelso, Scotland.

Northern gannets on a cliff on the German North Sea island of Heligoland.

A wild boar family in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany.

The overall winner of the
2020 Mammal Photographer of the Year: Foxhall Zafira by Roger Cox.

White storks build their nest in Linkenheim, Germany. Their breeding season starts at the beginning of March.

A bee buzzes around a branch with catkins in Schwangau, Bavaria. This week it was revealed that
Monsanto secretly funded academic studies indicating “very severe impacts” on farming and the environment if its controversial glyphosate weedkiller were banned, an investigation has found.

A rare white giraffe and her calf in Garissa county, Kenya, seen in 2017. The pair, Kenya’s only female white giraffe and calf, have been
killed by poachers, Ishaqbini Hirola Community Conservancy said on 10 March. Their deaths leave just one remaining white giraffe alive, a lone male.

A Sumatran tiger cub inside a rescue box after it was caught near a village in Subulussalam district, Indonesia, before being relocated by a local conservation agency to Leuser ecosystem forest.

Elephants rescued from the tourism and logging trades gather at a nature park in the northern Thai province of Chiang Mai on 13 March. The coronavirus outbreak has hammered tourism in Thailand. About 90% of the elephant camps in Chiang Mai have closed due to a drop in business. In Lopburi, north-east of Bangkok, a
crowd of hungry monkeys, usually fed by tourists, were filmed brawling over a pot of yoghurt.

A man wearing a protective facemask walks by a poster promoting the protection of wild animals after authorities cracked down on wild animal markets following the coronavirus outbreak in Beijing.

Members of the marine conservation organisation Sea Shepherd Conservation Society hold a banner reading ‘
Thousands of dolphins like this one are massacred each year in France so that you can eat fish,’ as they stand behind a dead dolphin in Bordeaux.

A flock of Amur falcon fly over Doyang, Wokha district of Nagaland, India, in November 2018.
Nagaland’s mountains form a jagged spine along the Indo-Myanmar border. Home to the Naga, Tibeto-Burman people made up of an estimated 70 tribes, it is part of the Indo-Burma “biodiversity hotspot”, one of 36 such regions identified globally.

A platypus is released on to a log in Little Yarra River, Yarra Junction, Victoria, Australia.
Pre-eminent Australian wildlife photographer Doug Gimesy has dedicated his career to the protection and conservation of some of the country’s most vulnerable species, many of which suffered big losses during the recent drought, bushfires and floods.

Kina barrens have proliferated with the decimation of sea urchins’ natural predators. Two decades since its creation, the
Hauraki Gulf Marine Park is overfished and overrun with urchins. Community groups are calling for urgent action to save the once-abundant habitat.

Runner-up of the
2020 Mammal Photographer of the Year: Rolling Mountain Hare by Kate MacRae.

The dramatic winning shot of the
National Parks Photography Competition 2020 from Peter Stevens depicts a rare osprey swooping on its prey in the Cairngorms National Park.