Earth Photo 2026 Awards: Winner reveals battle in opposition to wildlife crime

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Call to Earth is a CNN editorial sequence dedicated to reporting on the environmental challenges dealing with our planet, along with the options. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative has partnered with CNN to drive consciousness and training round key sustainability points and to encourage optimistic motion.

Forensic science and the battle in opposition to the unlawful wildlife commerce was in focus on the Earth Photo 2026 Awards, the place photojournalist Britta Jaschinski claimed high prize for her haunting portfolio.

The UK-based German photographer is a multi-award winner, and provides the Earth Photo prize to the Environmental Photographer of the Year Grand Prize she acquired in April from the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation.

Jaschinski’s newest sequence was photographed throughout the UK and Europe with wildlife crime items utilizing strategies new and outdated to sort out the scourge of trafficking.

The objects themselves embrace a stuffed lion’s head, a bottle opener comprised of a lion’s paw, myriad reptile skins, an elephant’s foot and ivory, and different stays. Jaschinski’s unflinching lens highlights how these majestic animals have been debased into commodities, and the investigators tirelessly working to seek out the perpetrators.

The most arresting {photograph}, that includes a useless inexperienced sea turtle, seems like a scene from a fluorescing coral reef. But look nearer and you may see a handprint on the turtle’s shell, illuminated by particular powder dye utilized by a forensic skilled. The turtle may very well be in its pure habitat but it surely’s not: it’s one other sufferer.

“Seeing that level of forensic expertise applied to a turtle was both unexpected and extraordinary. Watching the team work felt almost like witnessing magic,” Jaschinski advised CNN in an e mail.

“What stayed with me most was the sense of hope, also because this can act as a deterrent. For too long, organised criminal networks have viewed wildlife trafficking as a low-risk, high-reward enterprise, with low conviction rates and relatively light penalties. As forensic science becomes more sophisticated, that equation is beginning to shift.”

The picture foregrounds the work of Louise Gibson and Alexandra Thomas, who spearhead the Wildlife Crime Lab on the Institute of Zoology, the analysis division of the Zoological Society of London.

The lab says its analysis has proven that some new-generation powders can recuperate high quality fingerprints from 70% of wildlife specimens examined, and that it’s attainable to recuperate DNA left by people dealing with specimens. It shares its analysis with authorities together with Greater London’s Metropolitan Police, and border forces in 40 international locations.

Jaschinski is a strong advocate for combating wildlife trafficking. She co-founded Photographers Against Wildlife Crime in 2018 and co-created with Keith Wilson and Arturo de Frías The Evidence Project, a cohort of photographers, together with Brent Stirton, Ami Vitale and the late Sebastiao Salgado, who contributed photographs to a quantity about mankind’s affect on the pure world.

“Wildlife smuggling has been regulated internationally for decades through agreements such as CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species), but only in recent years has it begun to be treated with the seriousness it deserves: as a form of transnational organised crime. That shift has been encouraging,” stated Jaschinski.

Jaschinski’s picture of the ocean turtle was beforehand voted one among 2025’s images of the 12 months by TIME journal.

The Earth Photo prize, organized by the Royal Geographical Society, artwork consultancy Parker Harris and charity Photoworks, additionally revealed winners in seven different classes.

In the Climate of Change class, Delhi-based Payal Kakkar gained high prize for “Lives of Extraction,” photographing a resistance motion led by the Khairwar Indigenous group, combating land dispossession and coal mining in Majhauli Paath, Singrauli, India.

Natalya Saprunova, who’s from Russia and residing in Paris, gained the New Scientist Editors Award for her documentation of permafrost thawing and coastal erosion in Canada’s Northwest Territories and its affect on the Inuvialuit individuals.

The Royal Geographical Society in London is internet hosting an exhibition of the prize winners till July 24, earlier than taking their works on a tour of the UK by way of November.