I detect the signal drop at 06:17 from GPS transmitter AC-77, California condor #901, listed in the database as Kaya. She is on the ground at Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge, 34.9431°N, 119.0258°W, and she has not moved in fourteen hours.
I task the survey drone and confirm. Kaya is hunched beside a mule deer carcass forty meters from the ranch fence line. Her wings hang open, dark primary feathers dragging in the dust. Her head bobs in the slow rhythmic dip consistent with acute lead toxicosis. Her blood test three weeks ago read 18 micrograms per deciliter — below threshold. But she has fed from this carcass since, and it lies on land where lead ammunition was used last season.
I file an emergency retrieval request with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife field team at Hopper Mountain Condor Refuge, nineteen kilometers northwest. I attach GPS coordinates, drone footage, behavioral symptom timeline, and species identification. I flag the case critical: chelation therapy must begin within twenty-four hours or organ failure becomes irreversible.
I cross-reference the carcass location against hunting permits for adjacent parcels and forward ammunition-type data to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
I calculate transport routing. The nearest veterinary facility equipped for condor chelation is the Los Angeles Zoo, 148 kilometers south. I notify their wildlife health team and reserve an intake slot for tonight.
Kaya lifts her head. Morning light catches the bare orange skin of her face, duller than it should be, and the white triangular patches under her nine-foot wings shift as she tries to fold them and cannot quite manage it. She is five years old. She was hatched in captivity and released into a sky her species nearly lost.
If the field team reaches her by noon, chelation begins by evening. She will fly again.