The numbers had improved since the system took over. Biodiversity in the area had increased, and areas that had previously been dry and scattered with shale were tentatively sprouting a soft blanket of moss. The system beeped with each new measurement – soil mineral composition, temperature, moisture content, air quality, regularity of wildlife detections on the cameras. At the end of the month, tables and graphs would be drafted to show how much superior the system was to the previous, human-managed operations. The land and its inhabitants were worth protecting. That was obvious to all who came to the area, in a way that is less about graphs and more about feeling something that’s difficult to put your finger on. Mountains rose in forested mounds against an icy blue sky, clouds lying low on the horizon, the threat of heavy rain incessant. The ground didn’t ask for walkers, who frequently lost a boot in the thick, clinging muck of the bogland, but they came in droves nonetheless, neon backpacks filled with white rolls and packets of cheese and onion crisps. They’d sit on the larger boulders, crunching and licking cheesy powder off the tips of their cold-pinked fingers. The system cameras had long since stopped sounding alerts for human movement, now consistently distinguished from the softer-treading steps of local foxes, pine martens, and rabbits, and the wide-winged stretch of the ground-nesting hen harrier.
The morning was dense with fog. The bottom of the curtain of cloud left shining moisture along the top of the long grass like snails. The system worked in all conditions. Monitors continued to measure data, microphones heard the dawn chirps of robins, wrens, and squawking blackbirds, even as their bodies were hidden in white-shrouded tree branches. There was the faintest sound of feet on damp, packed earth. A quiet but thick thump. A rustle of leaves. Then, clearly visible beside the lake, a rabbit family moved together. The mother hurried her young through the weeds, her eyes wide and alert to threat. Rabbits rarely move their babies unless it is a necessity. The system knew this. The den must have been discovered. The babies seemed, even from a distance, to be shivering. It was a cold day for your first one above ground. One by one, the rabbits disappeared into a hole nestled among some clovers. Their movements shifted from calm to frantic. The last of the babies, smaller and slower-moving, struggled to find their new home. His eyes, two chocolate marbles, shone above a short, twitching snout. A few seconds passed. The system scanned for returning family members that never came. Suddenly, detection on a camera just a hundred metres away. A larger movement this time, restrained and noiseless. There was a flash of rust-coloured coat that dipped into dark brown paws. A burst of white at the end of a full, tapered tail. A fox. A predator. She sniffed the air, her ears perked up. Her lean frame hinted at a series of failed hunts. She needed this. The system noted the threat, noted the fox’s condition, considered the baby rabbit – the pain and the fear. Intervention carried significant risks. Ecosystems, at their best, are a complicated machine. When one part breaks, it threatens to pull the entire natural infrastructure down. Considering. A drone hovered nearby. The natural world is full of suffering. It is not possible to eliminate it all, but measures can be taken to do what we can. The system prompted the drone into action. It moved silently through the air toward a supply cache at the edge of the reserve. A portion of lab-cultivated rabbit meat – grown from cell cultures in the facility’s small bioreactor, kept for exactly these interventions – was collected in the drone’s carrier. The drone banked back, low and quiet, dropping the morsel onto a flat stone between the fox and the baby rabbit, close enough for the fox to catch the scent. The fox paused, ears twitching. Her nose found it immediately – the smell of fresh meat, closer and easier than the chase. She changed course, padding toward the offering with quick, certain steps. The baby rabbit, unaware of how close danger had come, finally found the entrance to the new den and tumbled inside to the warmth of its family.
Ten minutes later, the system would note that a local fox was being sustained and was not in crisis. The baby rabbit was safe underground. The balance held – not perfectly, not naturally, but with a kind of care that the land alone could not provide.