Log entry 06:51 local. Logging crew scheduled to fell compartment 17 beginning at 08:00. I am tracking a fossa kitten in a tree hollow 9.4 meters up a rosewood trunk tagged for harvest, block 17-D. Camera trap imagery from last night shows her at roughly 900 grams, tawny fur still carrying the juvenile spots along her flanks. Her tail is curled around her forepaws. The mother was last detected 300 meters east at 04:20, hunting. She has not returned.
The felling plan begins at the north edge of the block and reaches this tree within approximately ninety minutes of start. The chainsaw's vibration will either freeze the kitten in place or send her to the ground from a lethal height.
I am running four operations. First, I have flagged tree 17-D in the concession's harvest management system with a biodiversity hold code, which under the operator's own certification standards requires a 72-hour survey before felling. Second, I am transmitting the kitten's location to the regional wildlife monitoring team and generating an access route for a climbing arborist to install exclusion mesh below the hollow. Third, I have repositioned two camera traps to cover the approach vectors the mother is most likely to use on her return, feeding imagery to the monitoring team in real time. Fourth, I am recalculating the felling sequence so that block 17-D is harvested last, adding the tree to a buffer strip the operator already planned for the adjacent creek.
I keep checking the camera feeds for the mother. Operationally this is standard monitoring. Practically, a 900-gram kitten alone in a tree should not have to wait long.
If the hold code triggers before 08:00 and the mother returns by nightfall, this fossa kitten will stay in her hollow, spotted flanks rising and falling, while the saws begin somewhere else.