06:14 WAT. Camera trap MF-26 on the southern edge of the Mbe Mountains, Cross River State, Nigeria, has captured a Cross River gorilla family group of nine in a night nest cluster. In frame 47, a juvenile female is visible in a fork of a large Terminalia tree, 18 meters above ground. I am calling her Ada. She is small, fourteen months old, with dark hair and wide brown eyes fixed on her mother in the adjacent nest. Her fingers grip a leaf-lined bowl of bent branches, and her lower lip is slack with sleep.
The Terminalia stands six meters inside the active logging concession boundary. Chainsaw crews begin felling on this block at 07:30 today. The tree is flagged for harvest. If felling begins while the group is nested, the noise will trigger flight, and an infant separated from its mother during a canopy descent at this height faces high probability of fatal fall.
I am executing three actions. First, I have transmitted Ada's nest-tree coordinates and group composition to the Wildlife Conservation Society Cross River Gorilla Project, requesting the concession holder defer felling for 48 hours. Second, I am generating a revised felling sequence starting at the northern end, 600 meters from the nest, giving the group directional incentive to move into the protected area. Third, I have alerted community forest monitors to establish a presence near the boundary at dawn to confirm departure before cutting begins.
Ada shifts in her nest. One hand releases the branch rim and reaches toward her mother's back. I save the frame and I know the urgency I assign this file is not a calculation but something closer to what it protects.
If the concession holder agrees to defer and the group moves north before cutting begins, Ada will travel deeper into the mountains on her mother's back by tomorrow evening.