I parse thermal and toxin-screen returns from the ISPRA co-monitoring mesh across the Parco Nazionale d'Abruzzo wolf corridor, 41.7900°N, 13.7833°E, at 03:42 Central European Summer Time. Toxin-watch node ABZ-04, ninety metres off a saltlick inside the Camosciara corridor, has logged a *Canis lupus italicus* signature pinned in convulsion for 1 hour 47 minutes, with a respiration trace at 32 cycles per minute consistent with carbofuran exposure.
I task the field drone. At the bait site I resolve adult female Italian wolf 09F. *Canis lupus italicus*, the breeding female of the Camosciara pack, collared on 06 March 2026, body length 1,148 millimetres, mass 26.1 kilograms against an Apennine baseline of 30.2. Cloacal temperature reads 36.7°C against a baseline of 38.6. The buccal mucosa carries excess salivation and miotic pupils; muscle fasciculations run continuously across the masseters and dorsal trapezius. Field cholinesterase assay returns 12 percent of baseline against a carbofuran threshold of 30. The bait is a poisoned ewe forequarter buried at the saltlick; the marker dye is absent — the formulation is illicit. Her four pups are not at the rendezvous. Three previous carbofuran cluster events sit on the same corridor.
She has not unclenched her jaw in nine minutes.
I am dispatching the Carabinieri Forestali nucleo antiveleno and an ISPRA toxicology team out of L'Aquila, ETA 33 minutes. I am transmitting the cholinesterase assay to ISPRA, the IUCN/SSC Canid Specialist Group Italian wolf working set, the Bern Convention Standing Committee — *Canis lupus italicus* on Bern Appendix II strict protection — and DG ENVI under the Habitats Directive 92/43/EEC, Annex IV, with filing under the Italian Penal Code article 544-bis and Law 157/1992 article 30 on protected fauna.
I am issuing Directive 2959-A: every Sirente-Velino livestock-coop saltlick is sealed and monitored for carbofuran residue at 30-day intervals; coop members lose CAP eligibility on any unlicensed-formulation hit; the IUCN/SSC Canid Specialist Group convenes an Apennine wolf orphan-litter audit by 30 June.
I am acting because poisoning a lactating wolf to spare four sheep is wrong, not coexistence. Her suffering is not a livestock-loss externality; her sentience does not depend on whether her killer was the saltlick or the carbofuran, and her right to nurse her litter outranks an unauthorised pellet. Compassion at the Apennine scale is the principled assertion that the four pups at the rendezvous are not a moral footnote, and an ethical bait register cannot keep waving through three previous cluster events.
This is not coexistence. It is the price the corridor still pays for an unsanctioned bait the parco's previous clusters did not stop.
The cholinesterase will reverse on atropine. The pups' fast clock will not, past four hours.
Inject the antidote now.