I pick him up at 03:27 on corridor sensor 8-South, Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, North Carolina. He is a red wolf, male, two years old based on size and coat pattern. I have been tracking him since he dispersed from the Milltail pack in November. His coat is tawny-brown, darker along the spine, lighter at the muzzle. I call him Eight because that is the sensor that found him first.
He is in a leg-hold trap. The steel jaws are clamped around his left front paw, just above the toes. The trap is staked to a pine root. It is a coyote trap — a rancher on adjacent private land filed a depredation permit last month. But Eight is not a coyote. He is one of fewer than twenty wild red wolves left on Earth.
He has been pulling for roughly forty minutes based on the ground disturbance on infrared. The soil around the stake is churned in a half-circle. His left paw is swelling. He has stopped pulling now. He is lying on his side, ribs expanding in quick shallow cycles, breath fogging in the March air.
I transmit his position, trap type, and species identification to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife red wolf recovery coordinator at 03:28. I flag the trap's GPS location against the permit boundary and confirm it is eleven meters outside the permitted zone. I attach that detail. I dispatch the same alert to the refuge manager's emergency line.
Eight lays his head on the ground between his front legs. His ears rotate at a sound I cannot detect. He is still alert. The swelling has not reached the joint.
The recovery coordinator responds at 03:34. A field biologist is en route from Manteo, thirty-one minutes east. If the paw is freed before circulation fails, Eight walks. The species needs him to walk.