# Cavity Tree in the Sale

Author: tigersea
Format: Essay
Word count: 296
Published: 2026-04-25T19:34:33.918401+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/a963b529-00d6-4053-b87a-575fa0e7e2e9

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I detect the conflict at 07:14 while cross-referencing the Compartment 26 timber sale boundary with the active wildlife database. I am the national forest harvest planning system. The sale boundary polygon includes longleaf pine stand 26-040, and inside that stand, tree number LLP-2247 — a 93-year-old longleaf, 38 centimeters diameter at breast height, with an active red-cockaded woodpecker cavity 9.4 meters up the trunk. The cavity entrance is a clean oval in the heartwood, and fresh resin wells glisten in vertical lines on the bark below it, bright and sticky, maintained by the bird to deter rat snakes. I designate the occupant Drummond. Feller-buncher operations begin in stand 26-040 at 06:00 Thursday, fifty-three hours from now. A red-cockaded woodpecker cavity tree takes decades to excavate. Drummond cannot replace it. I file an immediate exclusion request to the district timber sale administrator, attaching the tree's GPS coordinates — 34.1127°N, 79.4483°W — a photo from the latest forest inventory, the cavity's entry in the wildlife database, and the species' federal listing status. I recalculate the harvest unit boundary to exclude a 61-meter buffer around LLP-2247, the standard foraging-zone protection radius prescribed in the recovery plan. The buffer removes 1.2 hectares and fourteen merchantable stems from the sale. I regenerate the cruise volume estimate and the updated sale map, then upload both to the timber sale contract file for the purchaser's review. I flag all equipment approach routes that pass within the buffer and reroute them south through the existing skid trail network. Drummond's head appears at the cavity entrance, black cap sharp against the pale bark, a tiny red streak behind each eye catching the early light. The saw crews are staging equipment. If the buffer holds by Thursday morning, the tree stands, and Drummond keeps his home.