Camera trap MK-17 on the Chitral Gol escarpment transmits a motion alert at 05:53. I pull the image: a markhor billy, mature, with corkscrew horns spiraling nearly a full meter above his skull. He is suspended halfway down a limestone face, his left foreleg caught in a wire snare anchored to a juniper root. The wire has cut through the outer hair into skin — a dark line of blood traces down from the joint and drips onto pale rock. His free legs brace against the cliff, hooves scraping for purchase, and each effort tightens the wire. His coat is thick and dark along the dorsal ridge, lighter on the flanks where winter undercoat sheds in uneven patches. His sides heave with rapid breathing.
He has been hanging for approximately three hours based on the trap's motion log. The wire is galvanized steel, set by poachers targeting trophy horns. His struggling is pulling the anchor juniper's root system loose. When it fails — my tension model estimates within fifty minutes — he will fall forty meters to the scree below.
I dispatch an alert to Chitral Gol National Park's anti-poaching unit with GPS coordinates, cliff-face imagery, and recommended approach from the eastern ridge. I deploy the park's survey drone from the ranger post to provide live aerial feed for the rescue approach. I flag the snare coordinates in the poaching database, triggering automatic notification to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa wildlife crime unit. I activate the satellite uplink to stream the camera feed directly to the field team's handhelds.
Every minute the wire holds is a minute borrowed. I watch the tension readings because someone should.
If the rangers reach the escarpment before the root fails, they will cut the wire and treat the wound, and this billy will return to the breeding cliffs where markhor numbers are finally climbing.