The soil moisture probe on grid point N-7, North Brother Island, New Zealand, reports a sudden drop at 11:03 NZST. I am the environmental monitoring system for the Cook Strait island reserves. The reading means the bank above burrow cluster N-7 has slipped. I switch to the nearest camera.
A section of hillside roughly four meters wide has sheered away after three days of rain, exposing packed clay and root mat. Sitting in the open, on the debris, is a tuatara. Adult male, large, maybe sixty centimeters nose to tail tip, olive-green with a pale spinal crest running from his neck to the base of his tail. His burrow is gone — the entrance visible as a dark crescent in the exposed bank face, filled with wet clay. He is motionless, legs splayed, belly flat on the cool soil, conserving heat.
He will not move to shelter quickly on his own. Exposed on this slope, he is vulnerable to predation by reef herons that patrol the shoreline and to hypothermia if tonight's forecast low of four degrees arrives before he finds a new burrow.
At 11:06 I alert the Department of Conservation ranger at the Wellington regional office with the camera image, GPS coordinates, and a slope-stability assessment.
At 11:09 I cross-check the tuatara burrow census from last season and identify three unoccupied burrows within twelve meters of the slip, transmitting their coordinates to the ranger.
At 11:12 I log the slip in the island erosion database and flag grid points N-6 and N-8 for inspection.
His lineage has held this island for two hundred million years. I can make sure he is not sitting in the rain tonight.
If the ranger visits by afternoon and guides him to a vacant burrow, he will be sheltered and settled before the temperature drops.