"They have really leaned into these categories over the last five years,” says Nat Geo’s Kathy Moran, a past judge and Luce’s photo editor for the tourism story. “It has given the competition the opportunity to both honor the natural world and highlight threats to the species and environments that the competition celebrates.”



As a text journalist myself, I believe in the power of the pen. But sometimes, it takes a photograph to really bring a message home. Looking at these photos, I don’t see how anyone could think that watching a muzzled polar bear do tricks would be fun or that having a monkey as a pet is a good idea.



This is the power of photojournalism.