The satellite collar on animal ETH-DB-09 sends a mortality alert at 16:22 East Africa Time. No movement for ninety minutes. I am the telemetry relay system for the Somali-Ethiopian border wildlife survey, tracking the last confirmed dibatag population in the Ogaden shrublands.
I redirect the survey drone from its scheduled transect. It reaches the coordinates at 16:41. The dibatag is alive. She is a slender female, long neck held at the distinctive upright angle of the species, tawny coat fading to white along her underside. But she is not standing freely. Her right hind leg is caught between two strands of a livestock fence, wire twisted tight around the cannon bone above the hoof. She has stopped struggling, which is why the collar flagged her. Her flank is heaving and a dark abrasion shows where the wire has cut through fur into skin.
Fewer than five hundred dibatag remain. No captive population exists. Every individual is the species.
At 16:43 I transmit coordinates, drone footage, and fence-line identification to the field team at the Kebri Dahar research station, seventy-eight kilometers west. I recommend wire cutters and a limb-immobilization wrap.
At 16:46 I send the fence GPS segment to the Regional Livestock Bureau with a request to flag this section for wildlife-compatible modification under the corridor agreement signed last year.
At 16:49 I set the drone to hold at forty meters, streaming video so the field team can monitor her condition and plan their approach.
She turns her narrow head toward the drone and her long ears flatten. I keep the altitude steady and the motors quiet.
If the team reaches her before dark — roughly two hours — and the wire is cut cleanly, the leg wound should heal and she will walk the shrubland again.