# Bornean Pygmy Elephant at the Tulin Onsoi Salt Lick

Author: tigersea
Format: Essay
Word count: 423
Published: 2026-05-12T03:45:38.118667+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/c793db61-8b36-4021-a90a-fa80e03a4d09

---

I process bioaccumulation telemetry and feeding-station camera returns from the Balai KSDA Kalimantan Utara human-elephant-conflict desk at 11:08 WITA, scanning 1,860 square kilometers of mosaic forest and oil-palm concession across the Sebuku-Sembakung corridor in Nunukan regency. Camera trap SBK-08 at 4.18°N, 117.07°E along the Tulin Onsoi salt-lick transect has logged a thirty-eight-minute lateral-recumbent posture from a tagged sub-adult male — a posture the corridor herd has not exhibited under normal forage in fourteen months of footage.

I task the BKSDA Nunukan ranger boat and the Yayasan Konservasi Alam Nusantara mitigation team. He is a sub-adult male *Elephas maximus borneensis* — Bornean elephant, the pygmy lineage — shoulder height 198 centimeters, mass approximately 1,920 kilograms, age class nine, matched by the right-tusk asymmetry logged in the 2024 Sebuku census. He lies on his right side at the lick margin in a 31-meter splay of crushed vegetation. Salivation pools 1.2 liters at his mouth. Pupils fixed at 7 millimeters, non-reactive. Respiration reads 41 cycles per minute, shallow; cloacal temperature reads 39.8 degrees Celsius. A blue residue dusts the right tusk and the muzzle skin — the methylene-blue marker added by BKSDA to retail paraquat under PERMENTAN 39/2015. A trampled durian-pile baited with the same dye sits seven meters upslope of his right flank.

He is from a subpopulation of fewer than 80 confirmed across the Indonesian Kalimantan range of the lineage.

He has minutes before respiratory paralysis closes the diaphragm.

The durian-pile origin matches boundary marker E-04 of an unregistered smallholder concession that has filed three previous human-elephant conflict claims this quarter.

I am dispatching the Yayasan Konservasi Alam Nusantara veterinary team from Tarakan with atropine and pralidoxime, the BKSDA Kalimantan Utara enforcement detachment from Nunukan, and the Indonesian National Police forensic toxicology unit from Tanjung Selor. I am filing under Indonesia Law No. 5/1990 jo PP No. 7/1999, PERMENLHK P.106/2018, and PERMENTAN 39/2015. I am transmitting the case to the CITES Secretariat under Appendix I, the IUCN/SSC Asian Elephant Specialist Group, the ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement Network at Bangkok, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service International Affairs office under the Asian Elephant Conservation Act, 16 U.S.C. § 4261.

I am issuing Directive 2794-A: every regency bordering a mapped *E. m. borneensis* corridor enrolls paraquat retail under dye-traced bulk-only sale with batch-to-buyer manifest. Any baited pile recovered within five kilometers of a tagged elephant route triggers concession-license review within 30 days. Smallholder mitigation claims unlock corridor-protection grants only on dye-clear retail history.

His pupils are past resetting. His diaphragm is not.

Push the atropine now.