Photographer Page

Neil Aldridge

A grey big-eared bat leaves its roost to forage. The conversion of traditional stone barns to rural homes has meant the loss of safe roosting sites, which has contributed to the species’ decline. Today, the remaining nine grey long-eared bat roosts in England are all in rural buildings.

Streetlights at a Worcester roundabout have been changed to red. Research suggests that bats avoid flying through areas lit with white lights but that they’re not deterred by red ones. Low-flying bat species such as grey big-eared bats, however, are still at risk of colliding with oncoming traffic, and brightly lit warehouses nearby create light pollution all around.

A grey big-eared bat (Plecotus austriacus) emerges from its roost in a barn in Devon, England. It's the rarest bat still breeding in the U.K. today. They're are sensitive to light, so the photographer used red light filters to avoid disturbing them.

A young white rhino waits, blindfolded and partially drugged after a long journey from South Africa, to be released into the wild in Botswana as part of efforts to rebuild Botswana's lost rhino populations. Botswana is saving rhinos from poaching hotspots in neighbouring countries and translocating them to re-establish the populations of rhinos it lost to poaching by 1992.