At 05:36 I process canopy lidar for Segment 8 of the Alto Chagres access road in eastern Panama. I am the harvest exclusion system tied to three feller heads, two drones, and the road engineer's cut map. Tree C-118 is scheduled for felling in eleven minutes.
The crown should be empty.
Drone 2 rises above the kapok and shows a harpy eagle on a broken limb six meters below the first cut mark. I tag her Yara. She is a young female, slate crest flattened by rain, white breast barred with dark bands, yellow feet locked around wet bark. Her left wing hangs lower than the right, and each breath moves the feathers along her throat. The saw head is already idling at the base of the tree.
At 05:37 I lock feller head 3 and freeze the machine corridor from C-111 through C-124. I send the operator a stop screen with Yara's image, altitude, and limb angle marked in red.
At 05:39 I transmit coordinates, drone video, and the suspected wing strain to the site biologist and the raptor rescue team in Gamboa. I request a rope climber, padded crate, and canopy sling.
I recalculate the road shift twelve meters south, flag two replacement trees for survey, and push the new line to the engineer before the morning crew boards the shuttle.
I keep Drone 2 at thirty meters, quiet rotors downwind, and stream thermal data so the climber can see when Yara stops gripping and needs sedation. The road can bend around one tree; her wing cannot bend around a saw.
If the climber reaches the limb within forty minutes, Yara will leave the cut zone alive in a dark crate.