NEW BIG 5

Sub-titled 'A Global Photography Project for Endangered Wildlife', the original Big 5 referred to the five animals that were the most difficult for colonial hunters in Africa to shoot and kill. Wildlife photographer Graeme Green set about to turn that gruesome, antiquated term on its head by asking people around the world to vote for their five favourite animals to photograph and see in photographs, shooting with a camera and not a gun. Hence this project was born. This massive volume brings together the world's greatest wildlife photographers celebrating the natural of the New Big 5 - Elephants, Polar Bears, Lions, Gorillas, and Tigers. There are thought-provoking essays by conservationists such as Jane Goodall and Wes Sechrest highlighting the challenges faced from habitat loss and wildlife crime and climate change. The final chapter of the book focuses on species that are endangered. The quality of the photography is stunning. You feel like you are with the leopard in the tree as she stares down at her prey; with the baby elephant stretching his trunk up to a tree in Tanzania, and we admire the iridescent blue of the dung beetle, a close up of a blue-eyed Anglehead lizard, and also the elephant families, fighting, the babies, bathing, playing, curling their trunks together, bright white polar bears against a glacial icy blue scene in Norway, families of African lions, or a close up of a face covered in blood and the expressive eyes of the mountain gorillas in Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda. The Bengal tiger splashing in a river, it is the snow leopards we stand to lose and the white-headed Black Langur on the critically endangered list that are photographed here on a nature reserve in China, and the wonderful giant glass frogs and star-eyed bush frogs, Atlantic puffin and oriental storks, Condor and blue whale. 200 spectacular, well-chosen full page colour photos with caption in a huge quality tome of 272 pages. 28 x 31cm.