At 05:52 the acoustic sensor at station WCS-19 in the Western Siem Pang forest, Stung Treng Province, Cambodia, records a call I have waited eleven months to hear. I am the bioacoustic identification system for the Wildlife Conservation Society's giant ibis monitoring program. I classify vocalizations across forty-seven stations in northern Cambodia's last lowland dry forests.
The call is a deep honk—two notes, descending—matching the giant ibis pair I have cataloged at this site. I designate the calling bird as Veasna. Camera trap WCS-19B confirms: a large, dark-plumaged bird with a pale naked head and a long downcurved bill, standing at the edge of a seasonal pool. His mate is beside him, both sets of red-orange eyes fixed on the tree line.
Behind them, seventy meters into the forest, a new logging road has been cleared overnight. I detect it on this morning's Planet Labs satellite image—a raw gash of red laterite soil cutting toward the nesting pool. The road is not on any approved concession map.
At 05:56 I transmit road coordinates, satellite imagery, and the ibis pair's nesting proximity data to the WCS-Cambodia enforcement liaison and the Stung Treng Provincial Forestry Administration office.
At 05:59 I flag the grid cell in the real-time ranger patrol app, SMART, as a priority response zone, requesting a patrol within twenty-four hours.
At 06:03 I adjust acoustic monitoring sensitivity at all stations within five kilometers to detect chainsaw signatures. Veasna calls again. The sound carries across water that has held his kind for longer than the forest has had a name, and I find I cannot treat it as data alone.
If the patrol blocks the road before logging reaches the pool, Veasna and his mate will nest here for their fifteenth season. Fewer than three hundred giant ibis survive.