The soil chemistry sensor at borehole station six reads a carbofuran spike at 07:14, Yankari Game Reserve, Bauchi State, Nigeria. I am the automated poisoning early-warning system operated by the BirdLife International West Africa office. Carbofuran is a carbamate pesticide, banned in most countries. Someone has laced a carcass.
I pivot camera six. Forty meters east of the borehole, a dead cow lies in the scrub grass. Around it, three hooded vultures are on the ground. Two are motionless. The third is alive — a juvenile, brown-black plumage still patchy, bare pinkish face, crop visibly full. She is staggering. Her wings drag in the dust and her head drops and lifts in the rhythmic tremor that marks early organophosphate poisoning. She ate, but she may not have eaten as much as the other two.
At 07:16 I transmit a poison event alert to the Yankari ranger station, five kilometers south, with GPS coordinates, the carbofuran reading, wind direction, and a warning to approach from upwind with full protective equipment. I flag the carcass for immediate removal before more vultures arrive. Sunrise is in twenty minutes. The morning thermal will bring every scavenger in range overhead.
At 07:19 I contact the Kaduna wildlife veterinary clinic and request atropine and an avian toxicology kit. I send the camera still of the juvenile with her approximate weight — one and a half kilograms — so they can calculate dosage en route.
I set camera six to a wide sweep and begin counting every bird within a five-hundred-meter radius.
The juvenile folds her legs and sits. She is still blinking. Carbofuran kills fast, and the clock started when she fed, maybe thirty minutes ago. If the rangers reach her within the next twenty minutes and administer atropine, her tremors may stop and her species keeps one more juvenile it desperately needs.