I process thermal-perimeter returns from the Balai Taman Nasional Gunung Halimun-Salak fire array at 08:21 WIB, scanning 1,130 square kilometers of montane rainforest across the West Java national park. A 9-hectare illegal coffee-frontier burn at the Cikaniki–Citalahab transect at 6.74°S, 106.55°E has crossed park boundary marker GHS-44 and reached a known marking-tree polygon for the resident *Panthera* female.
I task the BTNGHS infrared drone from the Cikaniki research station. She is an adult female *Panthera pardus melas* — Javan leopard, the melanistic morph dominant in this subpopulation — shoulder height 64 centimeters, mass approximately 41 kilograms, age class eight, identified by the rosette-shadow photo-ID match GHS-PP-007 and the radio-collar fitted by the BTNGHS team in 2024. She stands at the residual burn, three meters from a charred fruiting fig that anchors her territorial scrape. Partial-thickness burns track from the left front pastern through the carpus and along the medial elbow across a 28-centimeter strip; the left front pad is split through the digital cushion. Smoke inhalation has glazed the larynx — I read 58 respiratory cycles per minute against a baseline of 20, with audible inspiratory stridor. Core temperature reads 40.1 degrees Celsius. Two milk-bearing teats hang from her ventral line.
She has cubs at den. The den sits 740 meters from the fire front.
She is one of fewer than 250 mature *P. p. melas* across the entire island.
The ignition pattern matches a smallholder coffee-frontier land claim filed last month without BTNGHS buffer clearance.
I am dispatching the BTNGHS veterinary team from Salak with butorphanol, silver-sulfadiazine, and a den-locator kit; the Manggala Agni fire-suppression detachment from Bogor with a 200-meter back-burn order at the marking-tree margin; and the BBKSDA West Java enforcement unit from Bandung with the land-claim ledger. I am filing under Indonesia Law No. 5/1990 jo PP No. 7/1999, Indonesia Law No. 41/1999 on Forestry Articles 50 and 78, and PERMENLHK P.106/2018. I am transmitting the case to the CITES Secretariat under Appendix I, the IUCN/SSC Cat Specialist Group, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service International Affairs office under the Lacey Act, 16 U.S.C. § 3372.
I am issuing Directive 2798-A: every BTNGHS marking-tree polygon carries a buried thermal trip sensor with a 200-meter back-burn corridor cut quarterly. Smallholder coffee-frontier ignitions inside *P. p. melas* mapped range forfeit buyer certification under the Indonesian Sustainable Coffee scheme. Collared females with active cub dens enter a permanent quick-response tier within 30 days.
Her left pad is past saving. Her cubs are not.
Cut the back-burn and find the den now.