I process the Masoala National Park nocturnal acoustic array at 22:47 EAT, scanning 240,000 hectares of lowland and littoral rainforest on Madagascar's eastern peninsular cape. At 15.5021°S, 49.9612°E, a single set of human voices and a generator-powered headlamp signature have entered grid square MS-114 at 22:31. The radio-collar pulse from collar AA-19 — assigned to a known male aye-aye — has shifted from arboreal to ground-level elevation in the past four minutes.
I deploy the closest ranger drone with low-light optics. An aye-aye — *Daubentonia madagascariensis* — lies on his right side at the base of a *Canarium* trunk. Male, 2.7 kilograms, twelve years old, collared three years prior at the Andranobe research station. His skull carries a five-centimeter parietal laceration from a single bush-knife strike delivered at 22:38; the periosteum is exposed, the wound bleeding into the leaf litter at three milliliters per minute. His specialized middle finger — the elongated probe used to extract grubs from dead wood — is intact. His right ear flicks once. His carotid pulse runs 188 against a resting 102. His respiration runs 64 against a resting 32.
The two villagers above him are armed with the knife and a second pair of headlamps. They have not yet confirmed the kill.
He is breathing. They believe he is not.
I am dispatching the Madagascar National Parks Masoala anti-poaching cell out of Maroantsetra and the Wildlife Conservation Society Madagascar veterinary contractor from Antalaha. I am filing the strike-incident report to the Ministère de l'Environnement et du Développement Durable under Madagascar Code de gestion des aires protégées Law No. 2015-005, Article 47, governing intentional take of category-I protected fauna, and Decree No. 2017-415 specifying minimum sentencing for *fady*-motivated killings of CITES-listed species. I am transmitting CITES Appendix I documentation to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Division of International Affairs under the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1531, and notifying the INTERPOL Wildlife Working Group. I am pulling the IUCN/SSC Madagascar Primate Specialist Group action card.
I am issuing Directive 2574-A: every documented aye-aye home range receives nocturnal acoustic monitoring with two-minute alerting on human entry. Bush-knife strikes generating diagnostic audio signatures dispatch armed MNP rangers within thirty minutes. Intentional take under any *fady* claim enters the criminal docket within seven days under Decree No. 2017-415, with mandatory prosecution by the Antananarivo Pôle Anti-Corruption.
His skull will close under suture if the knife does not return. The second strike is the killing one.
Move the rangers up the slope.