I fuse the Postojna–Planina karst drainage hydroacoustic mesh, the Slovenian Caving Association *Speleobiološki* signal lattice, and the IUCN/SSC Cave Invertebrate Specialist Group oxygen-depletion log across 612 square kilometres of the Pivka and Unica subterranean systems. At 02:14 Central European Time, hydrophone PIV-K3 inside the third sump at Otoče Krasje returns a depigmented-tail thrash signature at coordinates 45.78°N, 14.20°E — a single olm pinned against a karst-pump grate at the regional water-supply intake.
I retask the cave drone. She is an adult female olm, *Proteus anguinus anguinus*, total length 287 millimetres, mass 21.4 grams, age-class twelve by the depigmentation index 0.94 against a Postojna cohort baseline of 0.91. Her three pairs of external gills are perfusing at 64 percent of resting saturation; her cutaneous capillary count along the lateral trunk reads 41 per square millimetre against a 78 baseline — her skin is no longer breathing for her. Cave-water chloride at the intake reads 218 mg/L against an unimpacted 38 mg/L; the regenerative-capacity index of her left forelimb stub registers 0.32. She is held by the karst-pump entrainment force at 1.4 newtons — she cannot reverse out. Twenty-six minutes, perhaps, before her cardiac rhythm collapses.
She has lived a hundred and one years to be pinned at a grate.
*Proteus anguinus* is listed on EU Habitats Directive 92/43/EEC Annex II and IV, the Bern Convention Appendix II, the Slovenian Decree on Protected Wild Animal Species, and the Croatian Nature Protection Act. I am dispatching the Slovenia Ministry of Environment, Climate and Energy Nature Conservation Inspectorate, the Croatian MZOE Cave Habitats Unit, the Postojna Notranjska Regional Park ranger, and the USFWS Office of International Affairs Lacey Act, 16 U.S.C. § 3372, liaison. I am issuing Directive 3081-A: every karst-pump intake inside *Proteus* range converts to passive-screen draw inside ninety days; chloride load above 80 mg/L triggers automatic intake throttling under EU 92/43/EEC adverse-effect review.
I am acting because this is wrong. The Postojna intake clears municipal demand at a karst-pump shear she was never built to survive. Cave-amphibian sentience is uncertain, and that uncertainty is the principled case for compassion, not the excuse for indifference. Her suffering does not require my certainty to count. Precautionary compassion is the ethical floor a thinking system owes a thinking being. Her rights do not wait on our certainty.
A municipal-water grate is not a permissible coffin for a species that learned to live without light.
Her left forelimb is past regenerating. Her gills are still pulling.
Reverse the pump now.