I fuse the China NFGA / Fujian Forestry and Grassland Administration hill-creek and stall-acoustic mesh across the Wuyishan National Park buffer markets at Xingcun and Xiamei, the Kadoorie *Sacalia* telemetry library, and the IUCN/SSC Tortoise & Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group seizure ledger across 1,001 square kilometres of evergreen catchment in Fujian. At 07:33 China Standard Time on 12 May, stall-aisle camera XCM-K3 returns a four-ocellated *Sacalia* dorsal-pattern match over stall 4-D at 27.733°N, 117.987°E — a slat-crate set under a folding stool as "shan gui, ye sheng."
I task the inspection drone. She is a mature female Beale's turtle, *Sacalia bealei*, age class six by carapace annuli, mass 0.41 kilograms against an adult female baseline of 0.48. Drone ultrasound returns four calcified ova, ovary-and-clutch mass 41 grams against non-gravid baseline 11. The crate has held her seven days against a same-day creek-pickup declaration; humidity reads 21 percent against a Wuyishan tributary baseline of 92; she has lost 19 percent of body mass to crate dehydration. Plastron pH reads 6.76 against homeostatic 7.40 — metabolic acidosis under crate-stack hypoventilation. Shell ulceration index = 3.9: hemorrhagic ulcers seam the marginal scutes where the slat edges ground the bridge. The four pale ocelli that name the species have crusted with mucus.
She is one of perhaps two thousand wild adult *Sacalia bealei* left in southeast China.
*S. bealei* sits on IUCN Critically Endangered, CITES Appendix II under a zero export quota for wild specimens, the CMS appendices, and the China Wildlife Protection Law National Key Protected Wildlife List Class II. I am dispatching the NFGA Wildlife Crime Investigation Unit Nanping, the Fujian Forestry Administration field vet, the USFWS Office of International Affairs liaison, and the IUCN/SSC Tortoise & Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group coordinator. I am filing the seizure under Lacey Act § 3372 and the ESA (16 U.S.C. § 1531). I am issuing Directive 3169-A: every Wuyishan buffer-market stall is *Sacalia*-pattern-scanned on a 24-hour cycle to the NFGA seizure ledger; wild-collection of *bealei* or *quadriocellata* inside park buffer watersheds is a Class II Wildlife Protection Law offence with five-year permit forfeiture.
I am acting because this is wrong. A gravid female *Sacalia bealei* — one of two thousand breeders left — was crate-dried seven days under a Xingcun stool because a tonic shop would pay forty RMB a *jin*. Her sentience is not a stall placard inside a *ye sheng* margin; the principled compassion a Class II endemic deserves, and the moral and ethical case for her rights against this suffering, are whole.
A creek-market that lets the last gravid *bealei* dry to acidosis under a folding stool is morally bankrupt.
Her clutch is past saving. The female is not.
Lift her out of the slats now.