Mountain Gorillas, Africa

Photograph by Joel Sartore , National Geographic

Alert to human visitors, a young mountain gorilla and its mother sit tight in Bwindi Impenetrable Park. When the park opened in 1991, villagers resented losing access to forest where they had gathered honey and wood. Today the park shares the fees from gorilla-watching tours with the locals, a small victory in the Albertine Rift's unending clashes for livable space.