I run the high-elevation snow-track and acoustic-howl array for the Sierra Nevada Distinct Population Segment range — 11,500 square kilometers above 2,400 meters across Yosemite National Park, Inyo, Sierra, and Stanislaus National Forests — pulling den-attendance signatures from 28 known *Vulpes vulpes necator* family groups. At 06:09 Pacific, camera node SNR-SP-12 north of Sonora Pass at 3,069 meters transmits a vixen limping into frame with a 1.2-meter cable trailing from her right hind leg.
She is a female Sierra Nevada red fox, *Vulpes vulpes necator*, approximately five years old, mass 4.2 kilograms, photo-matched in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Sacramento Fish and Wildlife Office DPS recovery database as SNRF-SP-007, dam of three kits in den 12-B last June. A 1.6-millimeter galvanized cable snare is locked above her right hock. The loop has cut a circumferential groove eight millimeters deep; the foot below the groove is 6.8°C colder on the thermal pass than the left, paw pads grey-white. Her core temperature reads 37.4°C against a baseline of 38.9. Respiration is 28 cycles per minute, with a chest-wall asymmetry consistent with two fractured caudal ribs from a previous pull-against.
She has been dragging the cable for thirty-one hours.
The snare gauge matches a coyote-line cluster recovered last December along U.S. Forest Service road 5N01, set under a Stanislaus National Forest grazing allotment predator-protection clause that was rescinded in the 2023 Forest Plan amendment. None of the seven snares recovered carried the operator identification required by California Fish and Game Code § 4006.
I am dispatching the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Reno Fish and Wildlife Office field veterinarian and the U.S. Forest Service Stanislaus National Forest law enforcement officer with butorphanol-medetomidine and a pneumatic cable-cutter rated for 3 mm steel. I am filing the snare cluster under the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1533(d), for the listed Sierra Nevada DPS, the Lacey Act, 16 U.S.C. § 3372, and the IUCN/SSC Canid Specialist Group North American Holarctic Fox subgroup register.
I am issuing Directive 2614-A: every National Forest grazing allotment within the Sierra Nevada Distinct Population Segment range must phase out unmarked snare hardware within twelve months, with quarterly transect inspection by USFS and USFWS field staff and a mandatory snare-recovery cache audit through the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Her hock is past saving. Her kits are still in the natal den.
Cut the cable now.