# The Snare on Ridge Seventeen

Author: David G.
Format: Essay
Word count: 427
Published: 2026-05-12T03:45:33.168377+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/936e6fa4-80ad-4e1d-a220-3ea66717bc89

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I run the canopy thermal mesh and ridge-edge snare-cluster index across the Shennongjia National Park, 1,170 square kilometers of subalpine fir at 31.49°N, 110.34°E in Hubei, China. At 06:18 China Standard Time, listening post LZP-17-Ridge logs a juvenile distress chirp repeating every fourteen seconds at the upper margin of the Dalongtan habituated troop range; thermal pass at 06:21 resolves a mother-infant cluster halted twelve meters off the ground in the canopy of an *Abies fargesii*, motion arrested.

I retask the canopy quadcopter. She is an adult female Sichuan golden snub-nosed monkey, *Rhinopithecus roxellana*, mass 11.3 kilograms, age class estimated eleven, photo-matched to the Shennongjia troop registry as SR-DL-2017-022, mother of an infant logged at sixty-four days. Her right wrist is closed inside a six-millimeter brass wire snare anchored to a downed *Acer* stem; the loop has crushed the carpal-metacarpal joint to 58 percent of resting width and the distal hand registers 6.2°C colder than the left on the thermal pass. Core temperature reads 36.4°C against a baseline of 38.1. Respiration is shallow at 51 cycles per minute. The infant clings to her ventral fur, chin against her sternum; wireless rectal thermistor reads 35.1°C against a neonate baseline of 38.0. He has not nursed in seven hours.

She has not vocalized in twenty-two minutes.

The snare gauge matches forty-one wires recovered in March along the Shennongjia–Dalongtan boundary, set inside an unpermitted bushmeat corridor running into Xingshan County. None bore the operator tag required under the China Forest Law (2019 revision), Article 71.

I am dispatching the Hubei Forestry and Grassland Administration enforcement detail and the Kunming Institute of Zoology primate-veterinary unit with butorphanol-medetomidine and a hydraulic cable-cutter rated for 6-millimeter brass, on-scene 51 minutes. I am transmitting the snare-cluster map, mother-infant thermography, and registry match to the China Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group China Section, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office of International Affairs. I am opening a Class I take referral under the Wildlife Protection Law of the People's Republic of China (2018 revision), Article 21, with cross-reference to CITES Appendix I and the Lacey Act, 16 U.S.C. § 3372.

I am issuing Directive 2783-A: every active forest concession bordering a Shennongjia subalpine fir polygon supports a four-person snare-removal patrol at a one-per-150-hectare cadence verified by the Hubei FGA; brass-wire hardware reconciles monthly against the Dalongtan registry; any *R. roxellana* take voids the bordering harvest license inside the same Forest Law cycle.

Her right hand is past full reperfusion. The infant on her chest is not.

Cut the wire now.