将大象逼入绝境的象牙贸易

On the fringes of Queen Elizabeth NationalPark in western Uganda, farmers drum loudly throughout the night to scare offtheir most destructive enemy: the elephant.

在位于乌干达西部的伊丽莎白女王国家公园的边缘，农民们整晚奋力敲着鼓吓走对他们来说最具破坏性的敌人——大象。

In the nearby Bwindi rainforest, smallsurviving herds of savannah elephants, cut off from their diminishing naturalhabitat, have adapted to a hidden existence beneath the canopy.

在附近的布恩迪(Bwindi)雨林，小群幸存的草原象(savannah elephant)远离了它们日益缩小的自然栖息地，适应了躲在树荫下的隐蔽生活。

Throughout Africa, elephants and humans arein intense conflict.

纵观整个非洲，大象和人类正处于激烈的冲突之中。

Humans are winning.

人类即将赢得胜利。

A hundred years ago there were 10melephants roaming the continent.

100年前，这片大陆上生存着1000万头大象。

By the mid-1970s that number had collapsedto 1.3m.

到上世纪70年代中期，大象的数量锐减至130万头。

So had the elephants’range, withherds restricted to ever-smaller pockets of land in ever-fewer countries.

大象的生存范围也是一样，象群的栖息地越来越小，分布的国家也日益减少。

Today, there are 400,000 elephants left,roughly a third of them squeezed into one relatively safe haven, Botswana.

如今，非洲仅存40万头大象，将近三分之一分布在博茨瓦纳这个相对安全的天堂。

The story of the elephant is one ofretreat, retreat, retreat, retreat, says Patrick Bergin, chief executive of theAfrican Wildlife Foundation, a conservation group.

大象的故事就是一个不断后退的故事，保护组织非洲野生动物基金会(African Wildlife Foundation)的首席执行官帕特里克•贝尔然(PatrickBergin)表示。

If loss of habitat is the biggest problem,it will only worsen.

如果说失去栖息地是大象最大的问题，那么情况只会越来越糟糕。

Africa has the world’s highesthuman fertility rates.

非洲是全世界人口生育率最高的地区。

In the next 30 years, the continent’s populationwill double to 2bn.

未来30年，非洲的人口将增加一倍，达到20亿人。

In another half century it could doubleagain.

之后再过50年，非洲人口可能再次翻番。

Then there is the slaughter.

此外，这里还存在屠杀。

In the 20th century, it was white gamehunters.

在20世纪，猎杀大象的是热衷狩猎游戏的白人。

In the 21st it is Asian ivory collectors,whose appetite and wealth has encouraged poaching on an industrial scale.

到了21世纪，是亚洲的象牙收藏者，他们的品味爱好和财富催生了盗猎产业。

It is hardly the first time humans havedriven mammals towards extinction.

这不是人类首次把哺乳动物推向灭绝境地。

Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens, callsus ecological serial killers.

《人类简史》(Sapiens)的作者尤瓦尔•赫拉利(Yuval Noah Harari)把我们称为生态系统的连环杀手。

The sabre-tooth tiger had existed for 30myears.

剑齿虎曾经生存了3000万年。

Within 2,000 years of its first contactwith humans, it had vanished forever.

它们与人类首次接触后的2000年内，剑齿虎永远地消失了。

A similar fate befell a range of animalsfrom mammoths and mastodons, a distant relation of the elephant, to giantsloths.

同样的命运降临在一系列物种身上，从猛犸象和乳齿象（大象的远亲）到大地懒。

Even before humans had invented the wheel,they had destroyed half of all big terrestrial animals.

人类在发明车轮以前，已经毁灭了一半的大型陆栖动物。

If humans are uncontrollable serialkillers, then surely the elephants’fate is sealed.

如果说人类是不可控制的连环杀手，那么大象的命运无疑已经注定。

Inevitably they will go the way of theAmerican lion.

它们将不可避免地走上美洲狮的老路。

At best, they will be driven tonear-extinction, preserved in a few city zoos and armed-to-the teethsanctuaries.

最乐观的情况是，它们被逼到近乎灭绝的地步，保留在一些城市动物园和全副武装的保护区内。

Or can anything be done to preserve theworld’s largest land mammal in anything like its present numbers? Thereare two strategies to arrest the catastrophe.

或者人类能做什么来使这种世界上最大的陆地哺乳动物维持在现有数量？有两种策略可以阻止大象灭绝。

Unfortunately, they pull in oppositedirections.

遗憾的是，这两种策略可以说是背向而驰。

There are obvious flaws in this strategy.

该策略存在明显的缺点。

Ban anything, from cocaine to Kalashnikovs,and the result is gruesomely predictable: its price will rise.

从可卡因到卡拉什尼科夫(Kalashnikov)冲锋枪，所有禁令的结果都是可以预见的：价格攀升。

That would energise poaching, not stop it.

这无法阻止偷猎行为，反而会刺激偷猎。

Even if, by some miracle, the policy workedand ivory lost its monetary value, African farmers would be left with maraudingherds of worthless mammals.

即使出现奇迹，政策起到作用、象牙失去了经济价值，非洲农民也不得不对付毫无价值、四处猎食的象群。

Other than their intrinsic beauty, theywould be valuable only insofar as local people could capture some of theresulting tourist dollars.

除了天生的优点之外，大象的价值只有在当地人从游客身上获得好处时才能体现。

The opposite approach would be to legalisethe trade entirely.

另一个截然相反的办法是让象牙贸易完全合法化。

Like debasing a currency, the idea would beto force an elephant devaluation.

和货币贬值一样，该策略是迫使大象贬值。

Under this scenario, the market would beflooded with existing stockpiles and arrangements put in place to harvest tusks.

在这种情况下，市场中将会涌入库存象牙，当局可以实施收获象牙的机制。

The hope would be to drive the price belowthat at which it is worth the risk and cost of poaching.

希望在于这将使得象牙价格降到低于偷猎成本的水平。

Call it fiat ivory.

可以称之为合法象牙。

A sustainable harvesting approach hasmerit.

可持续收获方法有其优点。

But it may be too late to try.

但是，现在再尝试可能为时已晚。

Mr Bergin says there are too many humansand too few animals. Legalisation of ivory would be a deathknell, he says.

贝尔然称，现在人类太多，而大象太少，象牙贸易合法化可能会敲响大象灭绝的丧钟。

Two experimental auctions, in 1997 and2008, breathed life into the illegal trade by creating fungible ivory.

1997年和2008年两次试验性的拍卖，通过创造可交换象牙而为非法贸易注入了活力。

Yet if partial legalisation failed, so hasthe 25-year prohibition.

不过，如果部分合法化这条路行不通，那么长达25年的禁令也一样。

Once again, elephant populations are inalarming decline.

大象数量再次急剧减少。

The bigger question still is whether humansand wild animals can live side by side.

但是更大的问题是人类和野生动物能否并存。

Africa is huge.

非洲地域辽阔。

It could accommodate the US, China, Indiaand western Europe.

超过美国、中国、印度和西欧的面积总和。

But from the elephants’ perspective, it isa shrinking universe.

但是对大象来说，世界正在缩小。

Unless African governments, working inconjunction, can protect areas of wilderness and connecting corridors indefinitelyfrom development, the debate on ivory trading will be a sideshow.

除非非洲各国政府通力合作保护原野和连接走廊永久地免受开发的威胁，否则关于象牙贸易的争论只能成为余兴谈资。

That is the mastodon in the room.

这就像房间里的乳齿象，岂能视而不见。