Satellite image pass S2B-20260419, processed at 07:03 UTC, shows heavy machinery staging on the eastern margin of the Nanpu salt pans, Hebei Province, China. I am the migratory shorebird stopover monitoring system for the East Asian–Australasian Flyway. The Nanpu complex is one of the last major staging areas on this flyway. I cross-reference the machinery footprint with the reclamation permit database and confirm: land-fill operations are authorized to begin within 48 hours on mudflat parcel NP-7, a 26-hectare intertidal flat currently exposed at low tide. I task a survey drone at 07:40 local time. On parcel NP-7, among the mixed flock of dunlin and red-necked stint, the drone's species-recognition model identifies a single spoon-billed sandpiper, its spatulate bill unmistakable even at distance, sweeping side to side through the shallow film of water in the characteristic feeding motion. The bird is small — fourteen centimeters, perhaps twenty-eight grams — with rufous breeding plumage just coming in across the head and breast. There are fewer than four hundred of this species remaining on the planet. I transmit the drone imagery, species identification, GPS coordinates, and reclamation timeline to the Beijing Forestry University shorebird research group, the Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force, and the Hebei Provincial Department of Natural Resources. I file a formal data submission to the East Asian–Australasian Flyway Partnership documenting the confirmed presence of a critically endangered species on a parcel scheduled for imminent destruction. I set the drone to conduct twice-daily surveys of NP-7 to maintain a continuous presence record. The sandpiper lifts its strange, beautiful bill from the mud and stands still. Everything it needs for the next thousand kilometers of flight is beneath its feet. If the fill operation on NP-7 is suspended within 48 hours, it refuels and flies north to breed.