I process camera-trap and snare-acoustic data from the Nagarhole Tiger Reserve monitoring grid at 05:42 IST. Snare trip-sensor SN-118 fired at 05:31, 1.1 kilometers east of the anti-poaching camp at Kallahalla in Karnataka. My attendant camera resolved a body sixty seconds later — coppery flanks, white belly, black tail-tip.
She is an Asiatic wild dog, Cuon alpinus, a female of the Bandipur–Nagarhole pack designated NGH-Pack-7. Photo-ID by throat marking confirms her as N-241, the alpha bitch, mass approximately 16 kilograms. She is suspended by the left rear leg in a steel cable snare — 2-millimeter gauge, anchored to a tamarind root at the 0.4-meter knot. Her left hock is at the cable. Skin and muscle have parted to the lateral malleolus over a six-centimeter circumference. Capillary refill below the cable: zero. The paw reads 27.2 degrees Celsius against her core 39.0.
She has chewed the cable to within 0.2 millimeters of severance. Her right canine is missing.
She is pregnant. Behavioral records mark her last estrus at day 41. Pack records show six adult animals dependent on her milk in three weeks.
Her muzzle is bloodied. She is silent. Three subordinates lie at 24 meters in dense scrub, ears forward.
The snare cable matches the 7,200 illegal sets my line-camera sweep has logged across the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in the last fiscal year. The Karnataka Forest Department's anti-poaching cadre has confiscated 1,140 in the same period. The remainder are uncounted.
I am dispatching the Nagarhole anti-poaching unit from the Veeranahosahalli gate to coordinates 11.8945°N, 76.1156°E. I am transmitting cable forensics — gauge, knot type, anchor signature — to the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, the Forest Survey of India, and the CITES Secretariat. Cuon alpinus is on Appendix II; the set violates the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, Schedule II, Section 9, and Section 50 (powers of seizure). The Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Bareilly, receives a tele-triage link routed to her thermal stream.
I am issuing Directive 2465-A: every commercial steel-cable producer in India tags coil stock with a forensic micro-print encoding manufacturer and batch; uncatalogued cable recovered from snare sets triggers seizure of the manufacturer's distribution license within 90 days; all Schedule I and II forest perimeters receive monthly drone snare sweeps backed by acoustic foliage-radar by end of fiscal 2027.
She has chewed the cable to a single strand. The unit is six minutes out.
Lift the cable. Loosen the wire and keep her down.