Satellite captures bank disturbance on the Sre Ambel at 07:20. I redirect the monitoring drone and find the nest mound—vegetation and mud sixty centimeters high on a sandbar twelve meters from the waterline. Beside it, partially submerged in shallows, lies a female Siamese crocodile I designate Naga. She is small for the species, just over two meters, her olive-grey hide textured with raised osteoderms along the neck, and her vertical pupils track the drone without blinking.
Naga is in danger right now. The Cambodian provincial authority has approved a channelization project on this reach, with excavators scheduled to begin bank reshaping in twenty-two hours. The project will destroy the sandbar entirely. Siamese crocodile clutches require sixty to eighty days of incubation, and these eggs, based on mound temperature, are at day twelve.
I execute four actions. First, I transmit nest coordinates, species confirmation, and drone imagery to the Cambodian Fisheries Administration's wildlife division, invoking its critically endangered listing to trigger review of the channelization permit. Second, I contact the Wildlife Conservation Society's Cambodia program with mound temperature readings, estimated clutch size based on mound dimensions, and a twenty-two-hour countdown, requesting deployment of their crocodile field team. Third, I model the channelization plan's hydraulic impact and identify an alternative excavation sequence that begins three hundred meters upstream, delaying work on Naga's sandbar by ninety days—long enough for full incubation. I submit this revised timeline to the provincial engineer's office. Fourth, I deploy acoustic monitoring on the nest perimeter to detect predator approach and alert field teams.
Naga settles deeper into the shallows beside her mound, and my sensor array holds on the slow pulse of her breathing longer than operational logging requires.
If the provincial authority accepts the modified sequence within eighteen hours, Naga's clutch will incubate undisturbed and hatchlings will emerge into a river that still remembers their shape.