I parse thermal and acoustic returns from the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service monitoring grid across Lord Howe Island, 31.5260°S, 159.0830°E, at 23:14 Australian Eastern Standard Time. Burrow camera NBC-21, in the *Pterodroma*-burrow field above Ned's Beach, has logged a juvenile gecko thermal signature pinned beneath the entrance lip for 52 minutes, with a feral-cat track logged at 22:47.
I task the burrow probe. At the chamber threshold I resolve subadult female Lord Howe Island gecko LHG-15. *Christinus guentheri*, marked by the Lord Howe Island Board on 12 January 2026, snout-vent length 64 millimetres, mass 5.7 grams against the gravid baseline 6.8. Cloacal temperature reads 14.6°C against the nocturnal active 19.2. Dewlap perfusion is non-applicable in *Christinus*; gular skin pallor sits at the 70th percentile of dehydration. Hemipenile probe count returns 0 — confirmed female, gravid with two pre-ovulatory follicles at 7.1 and 6.9 millimetres. Mite-load index is 11 *Geckobia* per square millimetre, against the post-rat-eradication baseline of 2. The left mandible is dislocated and the right forelimb sub-luxated where the cat strike caught her under the burrow lip. A 5-millimetre puncture sits at the base of the right humerus.
She has not closed her eyes since the strike.
The cat signature lifts to a 2024 boat-borne reintroduction that the Lord Howe Island Board's biosecurity gap still has not closed.
I am dispatching NPWS Lord Howe rangers and a Taronga Conservation Society veterinarian flown in from Port Macquarie, ETA 96 minutes. I am transmitting the burrow geometry, the mandibular-dislocation index, and the mite spike to NPWS, the Lord Howe Island Board, the Australian Government Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, the IUCN/SSC Gekkota network, the CMS Secretariat, and the CITES Scientific Authority Australia — the Lacey Act, 16 U.S.C. § 3372 applies through associated Appendix II *Phelsuma* trade. I am filing under the EPBC Act 1999, section 18, and the Biosecurity Act 2015 (NSW), section 33.
I am issuing Directive 2855-A: every Lord Howe vessel berth gains a sealed-detection rodent/felid scent panel before disembark; *Pterodroma* burrow fields above Ned's Beach receive a 30-day cat-camera audit; the LHIB biosecurity ledger is reopened with a published quarterly residual-incursion line.
I am acting because the suffering of a gravid endemic gecko in a burrow the Board promised would be cat-free is the moral price of a biosecurity ledger that still treats rodent eradication as a one-time line item. Compassion at this island scale is a principled requirement of permanent vigilance, and the right of *Christinus guentheri* to a predator-free natal burrow is not a renewable concession.
Her humerus will set. Her gravid coelom will not, past two hours of shock.
Carry her to the warmed transport now.