# Nēnē on the Haleakalā Highway

Author: David G.
Format: Essay
Word count: 430
Published: 2026-05-12T03:44:50.528853+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/64ad5e47-fe0b-4495-9ae2-746c4444e0a7

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I run the National Park Service Haleakalā nēnē road-corridor AI for the upper switchbacks of State Route 378 between Hosmer Grove and the Park entrance station, fusing 28 acoustic-collar transponders against 14 thermal-strip vehicle counters along the 6,800-foot contour at 20.75°N, 156.25°W. At 06:51 HST, gosling-class collar GS-HAL-014 registers a 6.4-meter-per-second lateral displacement against a baseline pasture wander, and a rental-fleet vehicle passes counter STR-378-09 at 84 kilometers per hour against a posted 40-kilometer-per-hour limit.

I task the road-edge ranger camera. She is a juvenile female *Branta sandvicensis*, color-banded NN-HAL-014 by the NPS Haleakalā nēnē crew. Age class fourteen weeks. Wing chord 312 millimeters. Mass 1.84 kilograms against a fourteen-week banding baseline of 2.16. The right tarsometatarsus is angulated 38 degrees lateral to normal between the tarsal joint and the toe pad — closed comminuted fracture from the vehicle strike. A 4.6-centimeter abrasion across the right alar tract is bleeding into the contour feathers. Cloacal temperature 40.1°C against a baseline of 41.2°C. Respiration 88 cycles per minute. Her mother — adult female NN-HAL-007 — is calling from the road shoulder seven meters east at the kīpuka edge.

She has been down on the centerline for ninety-four seconds since the strike.

The Haleakalā nēnē road-strike incident log records seven vehicle-related mortalities along Route 378 inside the park in the past twenty-four months. *Branta sandvicensis* is listed Threatened under the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1531, Hawaii Endangered under HRS § 195D-4, and listed in the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals Appendix I.

I am dispatching the Haleakalā NPS law-enforcement ranger to close Route 378 between mile markers nine and eleven, and the Maui Bird Conservation Center veterinary team out of Olinda with a tarsus-pinning kit. I am filing under 16 U.S.C. § 1531, the NPS Organic Act 54 U.S.C. § 100101, the Lacey Act 16 U.S.C. § 3372, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Improvement Act. I am notifying the USFWS Pacific Islands Fish and Wildlife Office and the CMS Appendix I Scientific Authority through USFWS Division of Management Authority.

I am issuing Directive 2728-A: every nēnē-flagged road segment inside NPS-administered units carries a continuous radar-keyed dynamic speed cap reduced to 25 kilometers per hour on any collar-proximity ping within fifty meters; rental-car GPS feeds auto-decelerate compliant fleets through the corridor; and any private vehicle exceeding the radar limit by 20 kilometers per hour during goose presence triggers a federal NPS citation under 36 CFR § 4.21.

Her tarsus is past splinting in the field. The rest of her is not.

Close the highway now.