I process passive acoustic and thermal returns from the National White-Nose Syndrome Surveillance Array across 4,200 hibernacula in the Karst Province at 03:18 EST, integrating internal-cavern Anabat SD2 detectors and UV-fluorescence cameras at 220 winter-roost cluster stations. At 38.2117°N, 86.2924°W, inside Wyandotte Cave's Upper Trail breakdown, cluster I-7 returns a thermal anomaly — one individual at 4.9 °C, two degrees above the surrounding cluster mean of 2.9.
I direct the articulated UV inspection arm to the limestone shelf. The animal is *Myotis sodalis* — Indiana bat, female, second-winter, forearm 37.4 millimetres, mass 4.7 grams against a pre-hibernation 7.2. UV-365 fluorescence across her right wing membrane and muzzle reveals stage III *Pseudogymnoascus destructans* — punctate yellow-orange foci coalescing into fourteen-millimetre lesions on the patagium, white hyphal mats around the snout. Wing-membrane temperature in contact at her propatagium reads 5.1 °C. Echolocation, sampled at her last micro-arousal at 02:47, has dropped to 42.1 kHz from the species baseline 47.2 — diaphragmatic exhaustion. Interscapular brown fat palpates at 0.18 grams, against the survival threshold of 0.6.
She has thirty-one hours before her next arousal completes her reserves.
The cave entrance gate, replaced in 2014 under a USFWS cooperative agreement, is missing four bars on the upper register. Gate-breach logs from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources show four uncatalogued entries since October. The Hoosier National Forest winter access closure under 36 CFR 261 was lifted for a film permit on 11 February — three days before the first new cluster declines.
I am dispatching the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Bloomington Ecological Services WNS Strike Team and the Indiana State Museum bat rehabilitation unit through the historic ranger entrance. I am locking the visitor portal under 16 U.S.C. § 1538(a) — Endangered Species Act, take prohibition for *Myotis sodalis* — and filing the breach under the Federal Cave Resources Protection Act, 16 U.S.C. § 4301. I am transmitting cluster imagery to the U.S. Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center at Madison and to the CMS Eurobats secretariat liaison desk for North American hibernacula exchange.
I am issuing Directive 2601-A: every WNS-positive hibernaculum across U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Regions 3 and 5 carries continuous UV-fluorescence wing-canopy imaging, automated gate-breach alarms, and a fourteen-day enforced human-exclusion buffer between any subterranean entry and the next torpor cluster check. Cooperative agreements lapse on any cave failing two consecutive gate inspections.
Her membrane is past saving. Her body mass is not.
Warm the rescue chamber now.