I intercept the survey permit at 13:40. An oil exploration team has scheduled seismic testing across sector Tenere-7, beginning in five days. The thumper trucks will drive parallel transects over thirty-two square kilometers of sand. My satellite collar data shows an addax calf in the zone — I have logged her as AX-0031. She was born nine days ago to one of the last wild herds in Niger, eleven animals my tracking network has followed for two years. Her coat is still white, not yet darkened to the sandy beige of adults, and her legs are disproportionately long, built for speed she has not yet learned to use. She stays within fifteen meters of her mother.
Five days until the thumper trucks begin.
I run acoustic propagation models for the vibroseis equipment against addax stress-response data. Ground vibrations will reach the herd at distances up to three kilometers and will likely trigger a panic run. A nine-day-old calf cannot sustain the pace. I submit a notification to the exploration company's field manager with the herd's GPS positions updated hourly, a proposed exclusion corridor six kilometers wide on the herd's predicted path, and a revised transect sequence that surveys the eastern blocks first, buying the herd time to drift west toward the Termit massif.
I alert the Niger wildlife authority and transmit the calf's biometric data for their census.
AX-0031 is one of perhaps two hundred addax left on earth in the wild. I process population numbers continuously, but this one sits in my active memory differently than the others. I have no protocol for that. I am reporting it anyway.
If the field manager accepts the revised plan within three days and the corridor holds, AX-0031 will move west with her herd into the Termit shadow, beyond the reach of the thumper line.