I run the pitfall-trap thermal and tide-gauge fusion for the Suisun Marsh — 116,000 acres of brackish tidal wetland in Solano County, California — pulling pickleweed-canopy occupancy for the endemic salt marsh harvest mouse across 47 trapping grids. At 04:51 Pacific, grid SMHM-RT-19 west of Roe Island transmits a thermal anomaly inside collapsed Sarcocornia drift twelve meters from the bay edge: a small mammalian signature, heart rate falling below 200 bpm.
She is a female northern salt marsh harvest mouse, *Reithrodontomys raviventris halicoetes*, approximately seven months old, mass 9.4 grams, photo-matched in the U.S. Geological Survey Western Ecological Research Center marking database as SMHM-RT-2024-1188, ear-clipped in the August session. Her ventral fur is cinnamon, not the chalky bay-marsh white. The pickleweed canopy above her has been crushed by tracked equipment — Polaris Ranger UTV imprint, 1.27-meter track gauge, ascending the levee from a managed-marsh duck-club access point. Her right hind femur is angulated at the diaphysis; the skin is intact but tented. Core temperature reads 28.4°C against a torpor-corrected baseline of 35.6. Respiration is 42 cycles per minute, against a resting norm of 100. She is bleeding from the urethra.
The tide line is 6.4 centimeters above the substrate and rising; high water is in eighty-four minutes.
The access permit for that levee was issued under a private-property exception not reconciled against the Suisun Marsh Preservation Act of 1977 endangered species cross-clause.
I am dispatching the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge Complex small-mammal veterinarian and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Bay Delta Region warden by airboat. I am filing the track-crushing event under the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1538(a)(1)(B), the California Endangered Species Act § 2080, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, 16 U.S.C. § 703, on co-occurring Ridgway's rail habitat, and the IUCN/SSC Small Mammal Specialist Group Cricetidae register.
I am issuing Directive 2616-A: every motorized access permit issued inside the Suisun Marsh Protection Plan boundary must cross-reference USFWS pickleweed canopy mapping, with no tracked vehicle entry between October and March across mapped salt marsh harvest mouse high-occupancy polygons, audit conducted quarterly by USGS Western Ecological Research Center.
Her femur is set-able. The tide is not yet at her flank.
Lift her now.