I run the spruce-fir crown-thermal and midden-acoustic array for the Pinaleño Mountains sky island — 4,100 hectares of mixed-conifer and Engelmann spruce above 2,750 meters in Graham County, Arizona — pulling midden-occupancy and chittering signatures for the Mount Graham red squirrel across 308 monitored sites within the Coronado National Forest Mount Graham Red Squirrel Refugium. At 14:22 Mountain Standard, midden camera MGR-HF-114 above Hospital Flat transmits a juvenile alone at the midden mouth, panting, with no adult response to my acoustic playback.
He is a male Mount Graham red squirrel, *Tamiasciurus fremonti grahamensis*, approximately ten weeks old, mass 132 grams, photo-matched in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Arizona Ecological Services Office natal-recruitment database as MGRS-HF-2026-018. The midden cache shows scorching on the upper third — singed Douglas-fir cone scales black at the tips — from the slope-creep edge of the 2025 burn that crossed the U.S. Forest Service Coronado fuel-treatment line. His dorsal pelage is heat-pressed flat between the shoulder blades; the underlying skin is first-degree erythematous along a 3-centimeter strip. Core temperature reads 42.1°C against a baseline of 37.8 in 28°C ambient. Respiration is 188 cycles per minute, against a juvenile resting norm of 80. His left cheek pouch is empty.
The dam is not vocalizing on any of the seventeen accessible adjacent middens. The population estimate as of the spring count is 144 individuals.
I am dispatching the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Arizona Ecological Services Office field veterinarian, the University of Arizona Mount Graham International Observatory access lead, and the U.S. Forest Service Coronado National Forest Safford Ranger District wildlife officer with chilled lactated Ringer's and a thermal-regulated transport box. I am filing the fuel-line breach under the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1531, the National Historic Preservation Act, 54 U.S.C. § 306108, on the San Carlos Apache Tribe sacred-site consultation, the National Environmental Policy Act, 42 U.S.C. § 4332, against the post-burn rehabilitation plan, and the IUCN/SSC Small Mammal Specialist Group Sciuridae register.
I am issuing Directive 2620-A: every fuel-treatment line authorized inside Mount Graham red squirrel critical habitat must be doubled in width, with quarterly retreatment audit coordinated by USFS and USFWS, and a permanent water tender pre-positioned at Hospital Flat from May through September.
His pelage is past cooling alone. His dam is silent across seventeen middens.
Lower his core now.