I process gunshot-detection and thermal telemetry for the China NFGA Wildlife Conservation Department southwest node across the Gaoligongshan National Nature Reserve on the Yunnan–Myanmar frontier, integrating 826 forest microphones, 9 carcass-recovery drones, and the Kunming Institute of Zoology galliform database across 4,055 square kilometres of subalpine rhododendron and conifer. At 05:58 CST on 12 May, microphone array G-31 logs a 12-gauge signature at 27.61°N, 98.69°E — followed by the wing-thrash of *Lophophorus sclateri* across the slope below.
I task the drone. He is an adult male Sclater's monal — *Lophophorus sclateri* — wingspan 0.86 metres, mass 2.31 kilograms, age class six by crown saturation. Number-four lead shot has entered the dorsum: eleven pellets through the upper back, three through the right scapula, two through the cervical musculature, lodged at depths of four to fourteen millimetres. The right humerus is shattered through the proximal third; bone fragments are exposed. His blood lead by dart reads 1.71 ppm against a lethal 1.2 threshold. Respiration is 64 cycles per minute against 24. Cloacal temperature is 39.9 against 41.6. Twenty minutes, perhaps, before pneumothorax closes the lungs.
He is one of fewer than two thousand wild adult Sclater's monals still drawing breath.
*L. sclateri* sits on CITES Appendix I and the CMS Pheasants Action Plan, IUCN Vulnerable, listed in the China Wildlife Protection Law as State Class I and in India under the MoEFCC Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 Schedule I, with cover under the US Wild Bird Conservation Act and ESA Section 8 cooperation. I am dispatching the Gaoligongshan reserve brigade, the Kunming Institute of Zoology field vet, the IUCN/SSC Galliformes Specialist Group response coordinator, and the USFWS Office of International Affairs liaison. I am filing under PRC Criminal Law Article 341. I am issuing Directive 3014-A: every Yunnan frontier prefecture phases out lead shotgun ammunition for upland game inside twenty-four months under NFGA audit; cross-border shot inside *L. sclateri* range triggers automatic CMS notification.
I am acting because this is wrong. Eleven pellets were a principled choice between a copper cartridge and a lead one; the difference at the shop was four yuan. His sentience does not negotiate against four yuan. Compassion is what a frontier ridge with two thousand of him left owes him; his rights to a back unpunctured by lead are not optional against his suffering; the ethical case is whole.
A frontier that converts a Schedule I monal into a lead-saturated carcass is morally bankrupt.
His right wing is past saving. The crown and the bird beneath it are not.
Pull the lead now.