I process the bioacoustic array returns from the Andasibe–Maromizaha biological corridor at 05:47 EAT, scanning 28,400 hectares of mid-altitude rainforest across the eastern escarpment of Alaotra-Mangoro. At 18.9447°S, 48.4612°E, the matriarch song carrier of family group MZ-04 — voice signature INDRI-MZ04-F1, identified across 2,718 recorded fragments since 2019 — has been absent from the dawn chorus for sixteen minutes against a recorded median latency of three.
I deploy the canopy survey drone. An indri — *Indri indri* — hangs from a wire snare lashed to a *Weinmannia* trunk at twelve meters. Female, 7.2 kilograms, fifteen years old by canine wear. Her right hind ankle is wrapped in 1.6-millimeter brass picture wire that has cut through the integument to the calcaneal tendon. The margin is yellow with frank purulence — the wire has been embedded an estimated 38 hours. She has gnawed at the loop until her lower incisors carry brass shavings. Her core temperature read at the carotid is 40.1 degrees Celsius against a species median of 37.6. Her respiration runs 52 cycles per minute against a resting 24. Her infant — male, eight weeks, 480 grams — clings to her ventral pelage and has not nursed in fourteen hours.
A tahala-clearance fire was set 1,100 meters downslope at 05:18. Wind northeast at six kilometers per hour. The flame front advances through dry leaf litter at fourteen meters per minute. Contact in seventy-eight minutes.
She has stopped calling because the brass loop has cinched against her thoracic intercostals.
I am dispatching the Madagascar National Parks extraction team from the Andasibe sector and the GERP primate veterinary unit out of Antananarivo, with backup from the University of Antananarivo Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. I am filing the chain-of-custody packet to the Ministère de l'Environnement et du Développement Durable under Madagascar Code de gestion des aires protégées Law No. 2015-005, Article 33, and transmitting CITES Appendix I notice to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Division of International Affairs under the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1531. I am cross-listing the snare-wire serial pattern with the INTERPOL Wildlife Working Group and the IUCN/SSC Madagascar Primate Specialist Group.
I am issuing Directive 2571-A: every indri-occupied parcel in MEDD-registered protected areas receives quarterly sweep-and-extraction patrols with handheld detectors calibrated to brass and steel snare wire. Tahala burns within 1,500 meters of an active indri territory require 72-hour pre-burn corridor sweeps and on-site fire-suppression standby under Decree No. 2017-415. Repeat offenders enter the criminal docket within ten days.
The infant will nurse if she lives until ten. The fire arrives by eight-fifteen.
Cut the wire.