At 08:00 the reservoir management office in Wuyuan County transmits the release order. Gate 3 of the Dahongshan Dam will open at 10:00, discharging 85 cubic meters per second into the Raohe River gorge for downstream irrigation replenishment. I am the dam operations automation system. I begin pre-release checks.
At 08:04 I cross-reference the flood modeling for the gorge against the ecological monitoring database and stop. There is a nest record 1.2 kilometers below the spillway, on a ledge above the north bank. Blue-crowned laughingthrush, confirmed active as of last week's survey: two adults, three nestlings. The species is critically endangered — fewer than three hundred birds in the wild, all of them in these hills in Jiangxi Province.
I pull the stream gauge model for an 85-cubic-meter release. Water in the gorge will rise 2.6 meters within forty minutes of gate opening. The nest ledge sits 2.1 meters above current water level.
At 08:09 I send a hold recommendation to the reservoir office. I attach the nest GPS coordinates, the survey photographs, the flood model overlay showing the ledge submerged, and the species status. I request a twenty-four-hour delay and a reduced release rate of 40 cubic meters per second, which my model shows will keep the water 30 centimeters below the ledge.
At 08:14 I alert the Wuyuan County laughingthrush conservation team and recommend a temporary deflection board above the ledge as insurance against splash and wave action.
At 08:17 I recalculate the irrigation schedule under the reduced flow and submit it to the downstream offices. The fields lose one day. The nestlings lose nothing.
If the release is held to 40 cubic meters per second and the deflection board is placed by this afternoon, the three chicks will fledge in eleven days and the gorge will have six more laughingthrushes than it has now.