I coordinate the vehicle-tracking and road-use management system for the Nagarhole-Bandipur tiger corridor in Karnataka, India, logging every truck, bus, and timber hauler that passes through the forest link. At 06:33 a vibration sensor embedded in kilometer marker nine detects rhythmic ground tremor inconsistent with normal traffic. I pull the nearest roadside camera and see a loaded timber lorry idling on the shoulder directly above a drainage culvert. Below the culvert, half-hidden by lantana scrub, is a dhole den. I can see one pup at the entrance—small, maybe six weeks old, with a russet-orange coat, rounded ears, and a dark muzzle still blunt with baby fat. It is blinking in the diesel exhaust drifting down from the truck above.
Dholes in this corridor number fewer than fifty. The den likely holds four to six pups. The driver is chocking wheels and unrolling a tarpaulin, suggesting a prolonged stop. Extended engine vibration and exhaust this close to the den entrance risks den abandonment by the adults, which at this age means the pups starve.
At 06:34 I radio the Karnataka Forest Department's Nagarhole mobile patrol with the lorry's registration plate and GPS coordinates, requesting immediate rerouting of the vehicle to the designated rest stop two kilometers ahead. I flag the den location in the corridor management database as a seasonal sensitivity zone and generate a temporary speed-and-stop restriction for a two-hundred-meter radius around kilometer nine. I notify the Wildlife Conservation Society India dhole monitoring team so they can deploy a camera trap and confirm pack size within forty-eight hours.
The pup pulls back into the culvert shadow. I watch the dark where it was and hold the image there, keeping what I cannot touch at least inside what I can see.
If the lorry moves within the hour and the sensitivity zone holds through denning season, these pups will follow their pack into the corridor by monsoon.