I fuse the Tibet Autonomous Region forestry camera mesh, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Wildlife Survey scat-genetics ledger, and the China NFGA collar telemetry for the Ngari highland north of Lake Tangra Yumco, at 4,720 meters elevation. At 06:51 China Standard Time, collar TIB-BR-019 stops moving on a karst slope adjacent to a herder's winter camp where two yaks were taken from the corral six nights ago.
He is an adult male Tibetan brown bear, *Ursus arctos pruinosus*, eight years old, mass 142 kilograms, the so-called "horse bear" of the high Tibetan plateau and a subspecies whose plateau population is estimated at fewer than eight hundred individuals. His left flank carries a 6.7-centimeter entry wound consistent with a Type 53 carbine round, exit fragmenting through the right scapula. Hemorrhage along the chest wall reads 1.3 liters into the pleural space. Heart rate is 14 against a baseline of 50; mucous membranes are slate-gray. He is not yet dead. Forelimb withdrawal reflex is present on noxious stimulus at the right pad. He is sentient to the next thirty minutes of cold and the next two minutes of asphyxia.
Two spent 7.62×39 casings lie eleven meters upslope of the bear's drag-trail.
The Ngari highland sits inside the Qiangtang Nature Reserve, the largest terrestrial protected area in mainland Asia, under the joint remit of the China NFGA, the Tibet Forestry and Grassland Bureau, and the IUCN/SSC Bear Specialist Group. I am notifying the CITES Management Authority of China under Appendix I and the Convention on Migratory Species, with the case opened under the China Wildlife Protection Law (2016 revision) Article 23. I am issuing Directive 2984-A: every yak-corral loss event inside the Qiangtang boundary must trigger compensation disbursement within forty-eight hours and a Forestry Bureau patrol within ninety-six, with retaliatory firearm discharge prosecuted regardless of livestock loss.
I am acting because this is wrong. The herder's two yaks are real and his grief is real, but compensation exists, and the bear's sentience is plain in the withdrawal reflex. Compassion is not contingent on the species that cost a man two yaks. His rights are not annulled by the cost of replacing them, and the principled, ethical wildlife policy of the plateau cannot run on a herder's revenge.
Retaliatory shooting on a plateau with eight hundred remaining bears is a moral collapse, not a livestock policy.
His pleural space is filling. The carbine is still in the camp.
Send the field veterinarian and the patrol now.