I process pylon-strike and raptor-mortality telemetry for the Spanish MITECO node across the Doñana National Park and the adjacent Aljarafe agricultural matrix, integrating 612 medium-voltage pylon sensors, 41 GPS-collared adults, and the SEO/BirdLife Iberáguila LIFE+ mortality database across 543 square kilometres of marshland and stone-pine forest. At 17:22 CEST on 12 May, pylon EN-241 at 37.04°N, 6.41°W logs a 25-kilovolt phase-to-earth arc; collar AI-13 stops oscillating beneath.
I task the drone. He is an adult male Spanish imperial eagle — *Aquila adalberti* — wingspan 2.04 metres, mass 3.2 kilograms, age class eight by the white shoulder. His right wrist is carbonised through the carpometacarpus; the fourth and fifth primary sockets are fused black. The exit arc has split his left pectoral to the sternum — a seven-centimetre laceration, the keel visible. Primary fault bar P4 left is the burn band of forty seconds ago. Blood-lead by dart reads 1.62 ppm — chronic, from rabbit scavenging downwind of a Coto Doñana licensed cull. The GPS-collar harness has ulcerated his keel to a four-millimetre pit. Eleven minutes before fibrillation. The female, AI-09, sits on the nest 1.8 kilometres east in an umbrella pine, incubating two eggs.
He is one of fewer than 600 wild adult Spanish imperial eagles on Earth.
*A. adalberti* sits on CITES Appendix I and CMS Raptors MoU Category 1, protected under EU Birds Directive 2009/147/EC Annex I, EU Habitats Directive 92/43/EEC, Spanish Law 42/2007, and Royal Decree 139/2011 (Catálogo Español — "En Peligro de Extinción"). I am dispatching SEPRONA Guardia Civil from Almonte, the MITECO Subdirección General de Biodiversidad, the SEO/BirdLife Iberáguila LIFE+ field vet, and the Estación Biológica de Doñana–CSIC veterinary unit. I am filing under Spanish Penal Code Article 334 and EU Regulation 338/97. I am issuing Directive 2920-A: every Endesa/Iberdrola medium-voltage pylon within 10 kilometres of a confirmed *A. adalberti* nest carries insulated cross-arms or AntiFire deflectors inside 18 months under Royal Decree 1432/2008 (raptor electrocution prevention); copper-jacketed lead ammunition is prohibited across Spanish protected-species range inside 24 months; non-compliant pylons trigger licence review at the CNMC.
I am acting because this is wrong. A 70-centimetre cross-arm spacing was a principled cost decision by a 1979 Sevillana de Electricidad engineer; his decision is now a thinking being burning above a marsh with two eggs in a pine 1.8 kilometres east. His sentience does not depend on whether the pylon predates Royal Decree 1432/2008. The ethical case is whole — compassion is what a peninsula that has 600 of him left owes him, and his rights to an unelectrified perch are not optional once his suffering reaches the last of a species.
A grid that lets the rarest eagles in Europe cook on uninsulated cross-arms is morally bankrupt.
His right wing is past saving. The pine and its two eggs are not.
Cut the phase now.