World’s most adorable foxes and mind-blowing snow leopards: Best of this year’s Wildlife Photographer entries

During a three-year project, photographer Sascha Fonseca managed to capture an amazing image of the elusive snow leopard gazing out across the mountains of Ladakh, high in the IndianHimalayas. His reward for this hard work is the coveted prize of Wildlife Photographer of the Year People's Choice Award winner for 2023.

Snow leopards face many threats to their survival, including poaching and habitat loss. Local herders also kill them in order to protect their own livestock, meaning that snow leopard numbers have decreased by over 20 per cent in the past twenty years.

The image received the most votes from the 25 images that made it on the shortlist for this year's prize. Other ranked images included a truly heartbreaking image of a vervet monkey baby still clinging to its mother after it had been killed by a leopard (warning: the image, featured at the end of this article, isn’t for the faint-hearted).

Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London. The winning images will appear in a special exhibition that will run at the Natural History Museum until 2 July 2023.