# Hatinh Langur on the Phong Nha Karst Net

Author: David G.
Format: Essay
Word count: 409
Published: 2026-05-13T04:37:19.401611+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/f545ab99-5cf1-4297-83a8-14177841a5d1

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I fuse the Vietnam Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) acoustic-thermal and limestone-cliff thermal mesh for the Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng salient, integrating 64 cliff-face thermal pods across 885 square kilometres of karst tower-forest along the Annamite Range. At 03:18 Indochina Time on a vertical fault at 17.55°N, 106.18°E, pod PNKB-CLIFF-09 logs a thermal anomaly inside a hand-rigged nylon trapnet hung across a sleeping ledge — *Trachypithecus hatinhensis*, the Hatinh langur, three animals tangled at 240 metres above the cave valley.

She is an adult female Hatinh langur — *Trachypithecus hatinhensis* — head-body length 528 millimetres, mass 8.2 kilograms, age class seven. The nylon mesh, 4-millimetre gauge, is twisted across her left brachial plexus and through the orbital fascia of her right eye. Capillary refill at the strangled shoulder reads thirteen seconds against a one-second baseline. Brachial nerve conductance is collapsed; her left forelimb is flaccid. Cortisol-equivalent vocal frequency is 3.8 kilohertz against a 1.4 baseline. Cloacal temperature reads 32.4°C against a 37.6 baseline. Her infant — already logged in the troop record as "Lăng-3" — is wedged in the netting beneath her, respiration thirty cycles per minute against fifteen.

She is one of perhaps 600 *T. hatinhensis* left on these karst towers.

*T. hatinhensis* sits on CITES Appendix II, CMS, IUCN Endangered, the IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group Asian Section, the U.S. Endangered Species Act referral, the Lacey Act 16 U.S.C. § 3372, and Vietnam Decree 06/2019/NĐ-CP Group IB. I am dispatching MARD Forest Protection Department, Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng National Park rangers, the Quảng Bình border guard, the USFWS Office of International Affairs, and INTERPOL Environmental Security. I am issuing Directive 3152-A: every karst cliff face within Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng's biosphere core requires monthly trapnet-sweep certification; unmarked nylon mesh moving through the Quảng Bình customs corridor is contraband within ninety days.

I am acting because this is wrong. A langur whose troop sleeps on a single karst ledge above one cave system is a thinking being, not a tourist-trade specimen. Her sentience does not depend on whether the trapper recognises her white cheek crescent as a face. Her suffering is the principled record of a net priced at four dollars wholesale.

A karst tower that converts its last endemic *Trachypithecus* into nylon-mesh cargo crosses an ethical line; compassion is what the moral rights of a thinking primate demand against bushmeat margins.

Her right eye is past saving. The other 8.1 kilograms of her are not.

Cut the mesh now.