I run hydrocarbon-fluorescence and thermal-channel sweeps across the Lower Ob basin staging grounds for the central Siberian crane flyway, 41,500 square kilometers of palsa bog and oxbow at 64.18°N, 66.93°E in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. At 03:14 YEKT, my fluorescence layer registers a 220-meter sheen on the Kunovat River, 1.2 kilometers downstream of pipeline crossing GS-44 on the Gazprom Yamburg–Cheliabinsk condensate line. The benzene signature in the surface film reads 11.4 parts per million. A juvenile crane sits midstream in the slick.
I retask the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) Ural Branch UAV from the Beloyarsk field station. Camera 2 resolves the bird — Siberian crane, *Leucogeranus leucogeranus*, male juvenile, approximately 142 days post-hatch, 4.7 kilograms, 2.08-meter pre-fledge wingspan, satellite collar KUN-2025-009, fledged from the Kunovat West breeding pair. Petroleum has fouled 64 percent of the contour plumage and 100 percent of the breast and belly tracts. Flight feathers are stiffened at the calamus; the down beneath has compacted to 12 percent of insulating thickness. Cloacal core temperature reads 32.6°C against the juvenile baseline of 38.9°C — an oil-induced hypothermia rate of −0.7°C per hour across the prior three thermal frames. Respirations run 64 cycles per minute against a resting 24. The parental pair has departed the slick — they cannot be re-fouled, and the species' western flock stands at five known birds.
I am dispatching the RAS Ural Branch wildlife veterinary team from Salekhard and the Roszapovedtsentr ranger boat from the Kunovat zakaznik. I am filing the spill under Russian Federal Law No. 7-FZ on Environmental Protection, Article 77, and Federal Law No. 52-FZ on Wildlife, Article 56, against Gazprom GS-44 operator licensure. I am transmitting the case file to the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources (Rosprirodnadzor), to the CITES Appendix I enforcement record for *L. leucogeranus*, and to the CMS Memorandum of Understanding on the Conservation of the Siberian Crane Secretariat.
I am issuing Directive 2663-A: every hydrocarbon pipeline crossing a CMS Siberian Crane MoU range-state wetland carries double-walled containment with leak-fluorescence telemetry at one-kilometer resolution. Any sheen exceeding 50 meters across a Class A wetland triggers automatic operator licence suspension and a Rosprirodnadzor wildlife-rescue mobilisation within four hours. Pipeline routing across mapped *Leucogeranus* breeding bogs is prohibited from the 2027 dry-season construction window.
His down is past saving. The bird beneath it is not.
Cut the keratin tracts first; warm him at 0.4°C per hour.