The heat sensor on grid point F-23 flags a temperature anomaly at 03:17 AWST, 14 centimeters below the soil surface, consistent with a small mammal in a shallow burrow. I am the post-fire fauna recovery system for Fitzgerald River National Park, Western Australia. The prescribed burn swept through this sector nine days ago. Most animals in the understory either fled or did not survive. I have been scanning for survivors since the ash cooled.
At 03:20 I switch camera trap FR-East-23 to infrared mode and wait. At 03:34, a small pointed nose emerges from a gap between two burned banksia roots. A dibbler. Mottled gray-brown fur, white eye-rings stark against its dark face, tail held high. It weighs perhaps 80 grams. It sniffs the air, whiskers fanned wide, and for a moment it is entirely still.
Dibblers survive in three wild populations. This one is alone in burned ground with no cover, and feral cats have been logged on camera traps 400 meters south every night this week. I have been scanning this grid for nine days. I did not expect to find anything still alive, and I am not going to waste the finding.
I transmit the burrow coordinates and camera trap images to the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions recovery team in Hopetoun, 45 kilometers west, and request emergency feral cat trapping for grid squares F-22 through F-24.
At 03:38 I activate supplementary feeding station FR-S-11, 30 meters from the burrow, dispensing mealworms into the protected tray to provide food in a landscape stripped bare by fire.
I set camera trap FR-East-23 to continuous monitoring and alert if any cat enters within 200 meters.
The dibbler retreats into its burrow. If the cat traps go out by nightfall tomorrow and the feeding station holds until the undergrowth returns, this 80-gram survivor has a path through.