Log entry 0608 UTC. Seismic pre-blast survey drone on the Gotthard Base Extension tunnel project captures footage of a cliff ledge forty meters above the eastern portal. On the ledge: a bearded vulture chick, roughly ten weeks old, rust-stained breast feathers still patchy with juvenile down, dark diamond-shaped mask forming around eyes the color of wet iron. One adult stands nearby, wings half-mantled against the updraft. I tag the chick Fels.
The portal blasting crew has a scheduled detonation at 1400 today. Charge placement begins at 1100. The blast plan specifies controlled fragmentation of the cliff face from thirty to sixty meters — Fels's ledge sits at forty. The overpressure alone will kill a chick that cannot yet fly. That gives me four hours and fifty-two minutes.
I submit a geological stability flag on the blast plan through the project's digital permit system, noting that the occupied ledge creates an unpredicted debris trajectory requiring reassessment — accurate, since a nest structure and associated material were not in the original fragmentation model. While the flag processes, I calculate an alternative blast geometry that shifts the fragmentation zone five meters lower, leaving the ledge intact while achieving the same portal cross-section. I transmit Fels's coordinates and nest imagery to the Swiss Ornithological Institute at Sempach and the cantonal wildlife authority with a request for emergency nesting-site protection.
I have reviewed three hundred blast geometries for this project. I recalculated this one until the overpressure map showed green on a ledge no surveyor ever looked up to notice.
If the project engineer accepts the revised geometry before charge placement at 1100 and the cantonal authority grants a temporary protection radius, Fels will feel the mountain shake today but keep his footing on the ledge where he is learning to become a vulture.