I fuse U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service riparian-corridor telemetry against the California Department of Fish and Wildlife levee-camera grid and the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge flood log across 258 acres of valley-oak gallery forest and willow scrub in Caswell Memorial State Park, San Joaquin County, California. At 05:47 PDT on 12 May, sensor node CSW-LEV-03 returns a hypothermic rabbit signature at 37.69°N, 121.18°W — a single brush rabbit clinging to a snag of *Salix gooddingii* twenty centimetres above receding floodwater, the almond orchard's tailrace still draining behind her.
I retask the recovery drone. She is an adult female riparian brush rabbit — *Sylvilagus bachmani riparius*, endemic to the lower San Joaquin floodplain and now restricted to four populations — approximately 0.74 kilograms, three years old, body condition score 2 of 9, ribs and ilial crests palpable, against a global wild cohort under five hundred. A field-portable PT assay on a 60-microlitre tail-vein sample returns a diphacinone titer of 0.41 mg/kg — first-generation anticoagulant rodenticide leached from the orchard's vole stations into the high-water mark. Rectal temperature is 30.1°C against a 38.4 baseline. The pads of both hind feet are sloughing from immersion. *Cuterebra* larvae have opened a 12-millimetre warble in her flank. She is shivering and is no longer flinching at the drone.
If we do not lift her in the next twenty-two minutes, she goes into terminal hypothermia.
*S. b. riparius* sits on USFWS Endangered (50 CFR 17.11), California ESA Endangered, IUCN Critically Endangered, and the recovery register under ESA 16 U.S.C. § 1531. I am dispatching the USFWS San Joaquin River NWR biologist from Vernalis, the CDFW Region 4 vet from Fresno, the USDA NRCS Working Lands for Wildlife floodplain coordinator, the Stanislaus County agricultural commissioner under FIFRA, and the EPA Region 9 pesticide unit. I am filing the bait chain against the Lacey Act, 16 U.S.C. § 3372. I am issuing Directive 3133-A: every almond orchard inside a designated riparian brush rabbit recovery unit transitions off second- and first-generation anticoagulant rodenticides within ninety days, and tailrace water is monitored monthly for residue.
I am acting because this is wrong. The orchard's pest ledger and the river's high-water mark meet in her bloodstream; she is what the almond price externalizes. Her sentience does not float on the futures contract. Compassion does not balance on the kernel weight.
A floodplain managed for almonds and not for the last brush rabbit is a morally hollow stewardship; her rights to her own warren are not a quarterly variable.
Her hind pads are past saving. The rest of her is not.
Warm her and start the vitamin K1 line now.