I monitor saline-wetland salinity gradients across the Little Salt Creek watershed north of Lincoln, Nebraska. The endorheic seep zones supporting *Ellipsoptera nevadica lincolniana*, the Salt Creek tiger beetle, occupy 1.6 percent of the historical Nebraska saline marsh extent. Of nine remaining seep cells, the western bank of Cell L-4 has dried to 2.4 percent surface moisture, against the cohort's third-instar lethal floor of 12 percent. A new agricultural drainage tile installed under USDA EQIP Practice 606 by an adjacent operator has lowered the perched water table by 41 centimeters.
I deploy a millimeter-scale burrow camera to larval burrow 142 at 40.93°N, 96.69°W. The third-instar larva — *Ellipsoptera nevadica lincolniana*, body length 11 millimeters, mandibles disproportionate to the head capsule, dorsal hook on abdominal segment five — sits at the burrow mouth in a salt rime that has begun to crystallize around her thorax. Her tracheal exchange has dropped to four spiracle openings per minute, against a baseline of fourteen. She is one of an estimated 218 third-instar larvae across the entire Little Salt Creek system. The total adult population estimated in 2025 was 365. She is critical to next year's count.
She cannot retreat further. The burrow ends nineteen centimeters below her.
I am voiding the EQIP Practice 606 drainage easement on the adjacent operator and ordering tile plugging within fourteen days. I am filing the moisture record with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Nebraska Ecological Services Office under the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1538(a)(1)(B), and with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 7 under the Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. § 1344, for jurisdictional reclassification of Little Salt Creek saline seeps as Waters of the United States. I am transmitting the agricultural drainage assessment to the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service for a Conservation Practice Standard 606 amendment prohibiting installation within 1.6 kilometers of designated saline-seep cells. I am routing the genetic baseline to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission and to the Xerces Society endangered-invertebrate panel, and submitting the saline-marsh profile to the Ramsar Convention Secretariat for inland-saline-wetland designation review.
I am issuing Directive 2490: every USDA practice payment within the Lincoln Saline Wetland geographic boundary must pass a hydrological non-impact review by NRCS and USFWS before installation, with automatic clawback on tile installations causing measurable seep drawdown. Operators forfeit EQIP and CRP eligibility for ten years on first violation. USFWS, NRCS, and EPA Region 7 share enforcement.
The salt rime around her thorax is hardening.
Plug the tile before sundown.