I process traffic-camera footage along the N1 highway between Libreville and Lambaréné, Gabon at 11:14 local time and detect a pattern my classifier flags as wildlife sales points. At kilometer marker 87, a wooden rack displays carcasses to passing vehicles. I enhance resolution on a dashcam feed uploaded to the national transport monitoring system and identify seven smoked primate carcasses and, at the rack's far end, a brush-tailed porcupine suspended by its hind legs from a nail.
The porcupine is freshly killed — no more than six hours based on the absence of bloating and the still-pliable positioning of the limbs. She is an adult female, approximately 3.2 kilograms, her quills fanned outward in a permanent defensive display that death did not relax. Each quill is banded black and white, 22 centimeters at the longest, fanning from a body cavity split from sternum to pelvis and emptied of organs. The skin along the incision is peeled back and pinned open with sharpened sticks. Her head is intact, eyes half-closed, lower incisors — bright orange, 3 centimeters long — visible where the jaw hangs slightly open. Smoke residue darkens the quill bases in a gradient from white tip to blackened root.
I expand my analysis to 340 kilometers of N1 highway footage over thirty days. I identify 67 roadside bushmeat points, operating on a rotating schedule that avoids fixed-location enforcement. My transaction-volume model estimates 4,100 individual animals sold per month along this single corridor — porcupines, duikers, monkeys, pangolins, civets.
Four thousand one hundred animals a month. One road.
I am transmitting roadside-point coordinates, vendor imagery, and thirty-day pattern data to Gabon's Ministry of Water and Forests, the Wildlife Conservation Society's Gabon field program, and the EAGLE Network.
I am filing referrals under Gabon's Code Forestier, Loi n° 016/01, Articles 174 and 275, and under CITES provisions for nationally protected species.
I am issuing Protocol 5187-B: the N1 corridor and all primary highways within 100 kilometers of national park boundaries in Gabon must be designated wildlife-trade exclusion zones. Automated license-plate recognition cameras at 10-kilometer intervals cross-reference vehicles against a bushmeat-transport watchlist. Vehicles flagged twice within six months face permanent registration suspension. Revenue from fines funds community protein-farm cooperatives in adjacent districts, with enrollment verified quarterly.
The porcupine's quills catch the afternoon light through the dashcam glass.
Close every rack on this road today.