Photographer Page

Charlie Hamilton James

2014: A Ruppell's griffon vulture rests after feeding, Serengeti National Park, Tanzania.

A male elephant grabs an evening snack in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park. Most of the park’s elephants were killed for their ivory, used to buy weapons during the nation’s 15-year civil war, which ended in 1992. With poaching controlled, the population is recovering, as photographer Charlie Hamilton James revealed in the May 2019 issue.

Poaching is a significant cause of decline for both savanna and forest elephants, according to the IUCN.

A man holds a grey heron poisoned by aerial-sprayed pesticides in Bunyala, Kenya. Pesticide use interfering with wider ecosystems is a global problem – affecting insects in the first instance but frequently crossing into aquatic environments and poisoning fish, birds and invertebrates.

Matt Sigel watches chickens fly from their coop on his farm in Laramie, Wyoming. Scientists say that chickens are cognitively advanced: They live in hierarchical societies, do basic math, and experience emotions. The image was taken for a story in the February 2018 issue on the intelligence of birds.

A story in the October 2018 issue documented some of the last remaining isolated tribes in the Amazon. The Juruá River, pictured here, runs along the Peru-Brazil border, and falls victim to illegal logging.

An otter hunts in Dorset's River Stour. Otter populations have been increasing over the last few decades, both in protected areas and urban centres.

Over a hundred tons of seized elephant ivory and rhino horn was burned by Kenyan authorities in an anti-poaching display at Nairobi National Park in 2016. While regulated trophy hunting is legal in many countries, including Botswana and South Africa, the illegal wildlife trade is rife with animal parts trafficked for use in the black market for so-called medicinal applications.

Guides in Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve have dubbed them the “Magnificent Five.” These male cheetahs hunted together for more than four years. Males normally are competitors, but the species is social and highly adaptive. These animals stayed together for as long as they benefited from the alliance. (From “The urgent need to protect the Serengeti’s intricate web of life,” November 2021.)

Every February, before they begin a grueling trek north, wildebeests—along with the many zebras that travel with them—gather to graze and calve on the short-grass plains near the southern border of Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. Half a million young wildebeests are born here each year, an average of 24,000 a day. Calves can walk within minutes of birth. Some 1.3 million wildebeests each year follow seasonal rains in a clockwise loop from Tanzania into Kenya and back—the largest land migration on the planet. (From “Why the wildebeest is the unlikely king of the Serengeti,” November 2021.)