At 00:17 in a Costa Rican rainforest, a Baird’s tapir is being treated for screwworm infestation. Dutch photographer Michiel van Noppen photographed the nighttime intervention, but the striking frame is part of a wider conservation story: tapirs disperse seeds for the rare Jícaro Danto tree, while fragmented habitat and disease threaten both sides of that relationship.
What is happening in the photograph?
The animal is a Baird’s tapir, and the image captures treatment underway for screwworm. The photograph does not establish which medication or procedure the team used, or whether the tapir recovered; those details are not specified in the accounts by Digital Camera World or van Noppen’s project page.
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Screwworm is a parasitic blowfly whose larvae feed on living flesh. The scene is therefore more than an encounter with an injured animal: it shows the risks wildlife can face where forest habitat and human land use meet. Van Noppen’s account links the increased risk of screwworm to fragmented landscapes where tapirs and cattle share space; that is the photographer’s description, not independent clinical reporting.
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How was the night photograph made?
Digital Camera World reports that van Noppen used a Canon EOS R6 with a Canon RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens, set to 37mm. Its reported exposure metadata are 1/25 sec, f/5.6 and ISO 8000, in manual mode with flash; the recorded focus distance is 1.31m. These are the feature’s reported settings, not independently tested results.
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The image balances two kinds of light. Flash illuminates and freezes the tapir, while the relatively slow shutter speed and high ISO register the headtorch and its glow. The torchlight remains visible rather than disappearing into a black background, preserving the sense of a nighttime intervention.
The composition guides the eye diagonally from the headtorch along the arm to the wound and treatment. Red liquid draws attention back toward the centre of the frame. The technical choices serve the story: flash makes the animal legible, while ambient torchlight keeps the people and setting present.
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Why the tapir matters to the Jícaro Danto tree
The frame belongs to Tales of the Forest Keepers: Safeguarding a Fragile Bond, van Noppen’s project about the relationship between Baird’s tapirs and the rare Jícaro Danto tree in Costa Rica’s Guanacaste region. Tapirs disperse the tree’s seeds, connecting the animal’s survival with the regeneration of its forest habitat.
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The German Society for Nature Photography (GDT), which awarded the project the 2026 Fritz Pölking Prize, describes habitat loss and New World screwworm as threats to this ecological relationship. It also points to a team in Bijagua working with the local community to protect tapirs and the tree. The project’s conservation frame is thus interconnected: habitat fragmentation can put tapirs under pressure and, in turn, imperil a species that depends on them to spread its seeds.
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Van Noppen’s project page gives a rough estimate of around 600 Jícaro Danto trees left in the wild, while explicitly saying the exact number is unknown. The page does not provide a clear publication date, so that figure should not be read as a current count.
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GDT named van Noppen the winner of the 2026 Fritz Pölking Prize for this project. The jury praised its connection of ecological relationships, threats and local conservation efforts. Hanneke Van Camp, speaking for the jury, said the images show how conservation photography can make interactions between species visible, draw on scientific findings and local knowledge, and reveal challenges and possible ways for people and nature to coexist.
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The individual photograph holds attention with its urgency, but the project places that moment within a longer story: a threatened animal, a tree whose seeds it disperses, fragmented habitat and people working locally to protect both.
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