A collection of stunning wildlife photographs has been unveiled in Edinburgh's St Andrews Square in a bid to make people think twice about the way they treat the environment.

Photographer Steve Bloom's free Spirit of the Wild exhibition features 60 oversized images of animals, arranged to allow visitors to take a tour of the globe. The renowned exhibit has already toured mainland Europe but this is the first time it has gone on show in Scotland.

The collection was gathered over the course of 12 years and takes in creatures from every continent of earth. It features photos of some of the planet’s most endangered species, including the giant panda and the Siberian tiger, each of which are accompanied by informative captions, designed to raise public awareness of wild animals and the environmental issues which affect them.

Photographer Steve Bloom says the aim is to inform, not frighten. He told STV News: "The pictures are very big so it takes up your peripheral vision and in a sense, it's an alternative to zoos and natural history programmes. People can learn about animals right in the heart of the city.

"But it's not done in a preaching way and it's not done with negative images. It's all about showing the beauty, the magic and the splendour of the wildlife and you can come into the exhibition and sort of get lost among the colour and the diversity of the animals."

The renowned wildlife photographer had been working in London for decades, but decided to embark on a career in photography after taking one particularly powerful image while on a family trip to the Monkey World wildlife park in Dorset.

He said: "When I started, I took a photograph of a chimpanzee with his hand stretched out in the rain which you can see here. The raindrops are bouncing off the chimp's hand and he's contemplative and thinking about the rain. And you can actually see this in the picture. That's when I realised how incredibly powerful photography is as a way of making people aware in an instant.

"So I decided then I wanted to do my first book, which was all about primates, and I photographed gorillas and chimpanzees in the wild. Then I photographed the orangutans in the wild in Borneo, and ten days after I left the area, it had been devastated by forest fires caused by illegal loggers and a number of orangutans were killed. "

The public exhibition opened on Friday and will remain in the St Andrews Square gardens until May as the centrepiece of the Edinburgh International Science Festival.

The festival's director, Dr Simon Gage, said: "In this, the International Year of Biodiversity, the Edinburgh International Science Festival is celebrating all that is wonderful and inspiring about our natural world, and Steve’s extraordinary images encapsulate this, and focus our attention on what is at risk if we don’t look after our natural environment. 

"We are delighted to bring the Science Festival out to a wider audience using the wonderful public space that is St Andrews Square.”

Mr Bloom said he hopes people will enjoy visiting the exhibition while in the city and spending time looking around the images and getting to know the animals. However, he said he also hope they will also use the images to consider their own responsibilities.

He said: "I hope people will take away with them a greater awareness of how important it is to protect the environment. By seeing how magnificent it is, hopefully people will acknowledge that the world is a very precious thing and not something to be abused.

"I use eye contact a lot and looking into the eyes of the animals, you see something of yourself in them. I don't have a problem with that because I think, when you see something of yourself in animals, you're less likely to be abusive towards them."

Spirit of the Wild will run from  March 12 to May 16 and is open, free of charge, from 8am to 6pm daily.  The Edinburgh International Science Festival runs from April 3 to April 17.