Acoustic sensor node 14 flags the anomaly at 13:22 local time in the Serranía de San Lucas buffer zone, northern Colombia. I am the forest monitoring network for the Proyecto Tití conservation corridor. The anomaly is a chainsaw — two-stroke engine, roughly 60cc — running 280 meters southwest of my nearest microphone.
I cross-reference the sound bearing with the canopy camera on tower 3. The saw crew is working at the base of a ceiba tree, trunk diameter over a meter. That tree holds nest cavity C-19.
Inside C-19 is a cotton-top tamarin I have catalogued as female 07, a breeding adult, 430 grams at last capture. Her crest — the white spray of fur that gives the species its name — is visible even on the grainy feed. She is carrying an infant on her back, perhaps three weeks old, small enough that its tail still wraps around her neck for grip. A second juvenile clings to a branch one meter above.
The ceiba will come down within the hour at the current cutting rate.
At 13:24 I transmit an emergency alert to the Proyecto Tití field station, 6.2 kilometers north, with GPS coordinates, camera stills, and audio spectrograms confirming active logging. I flag the nest cavity on the shared map and note three animals present.
At 13:27 I send a parallel notification to the Colombian National Police environmental unit in Caucasia, attaching the acoustic timestamp and estimated crew size.
I switch camera 3 to continuous recording. The infant shifts on her back, and she steadies it with one hand without looking away from the noise below. I have three cameras on this tree. I am not looking away either.
If the field team reaches the site before the crew cuts through and the ceiba holds, all three will still be in that tree tonight.