外刊双语：马来西亚大象的活动边界？

原文标题：
Conserving elephants
Know your boundaries
Malaysia’s elephants spend more time outside protected areas than in them
保护大象
了解界限
马来西亚大象在保护区外的时间比在保护区内的时间长

The grub is better there
那里的食物更好

[Paragraph 1]
WAY BACK in 1999, Iain Douglas-Hamilton, a doyen of research into African elephants, made an intriguing discovery.
早在1999年，一位研究非洲象的学者伊恩·道格拉斯·汉密尔顿就有一个有趣的发现。

Using the Global Positioning System (GPS) to track them—a first—he found that they knew exactly where the boundaries of protected areas were.
用全球定位系统（GPS）跟踪大象——他发现非洲大象知道保护区的边界在哪里。

They ranged freely within these areas, but when crossing between them, through apparently similar but unprotected habitat, they did so at night and at what was (for an elephant) a gallop.
它们在这些区域内自由活动，但当它们穿过明显相似但未受保护的栖息地时，它们会在夜间（对大象来说）“疾驰”而过。

[Paragraph 2]
At first sight, it looks as though Asian elephants did not get the memo. They seem to travel outside protected areas with gay abandon.
初看之下，似乎亚洲象不知道边界在哪。他们很随意地走出保护区。

But a study by Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz of Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, in Yunnan province, China, and Benoit Goossens of Danau Girang Field Centre, in Sabah, Malaysia, suggests that this abandon is not quite as gay as it seems.
但是，中国云南省西双版纳热带植物园的阿希姆萨·坎波斯-阿塞兹和马来西亚沙巴市达瑙-吉朗野外中心的贝努瓦·古森共同的研究表明，这种随意并不像看上去那么快乐。

[Paragraph 3]
Dr Campos-Arceiz, Dr Goossens and their colleagues synthesised the work of three research groups who were following in Dr Douglas-Hamilton’s footsteps by tracking their quarry with GPS.
坎波斯-阿塞兹博士、古森博士和他们的同事们综合了三个研究小组的工作，这些研究小组沿用了道格拉斯·汉密尔顿博士的方法，即通过GPS追踪目标。

Collectively, these groups studied, over the course of more than a decade, 102 elephants in both west and east Malaysia. Altogether, they recorded more than 600,000 GPS locations.
在研究这个课题的十多年里，这些小组共同研究了马来西亚西部和东部的102头大象。他们总共记录了60多万个GPS位置。

[Paragraph 4]
As they report in the Journal of Applied Ecology, they found that these elephants, though concentrated in Malaysia’s protected areas, spent more than half of their time outside them.
正如他们在《应用生态学报》上所报道的那样，他们发现，这些大象虽然集中在马来西亚的保护区，但却有一半以上的时间都在保护区外。

The reason, which did not pertain to Dr Douglas-Hamilton’s study, was that habitats inside and outside those areas differed.
这与道格拉斯·汉密尔顿博士的研究无关，因为这些保护区域内外的栖息地不同。

In Malaysia, protection tends to be afforded to primary forests.
在马来西亚，原始森林往往受到保护。

Elephants prefer more disturbed areas, with palms and saplings to snack on, and also grasses, among them bamboo.
大象更喜欢受干扰的地区，因为那里有棕榈树和树苗可以吃，还有草，其中包括竹子。

Mature forest trees offer fewer opportunities to feed.
成熟森林里的大树不适合作大象的食物。

[Paragraph 5]
Which is not to say that the protected areas offered no protection.
这并不是说保护区没有起到保护作用。

Most forays went less than 3km from those areas. Home ranges, by contrast, were measured in hundreds, or thousands, of square kilometres.
大多数大象涉足的范围不到3公里。而相比一般情况下，动物的范围是以数百或数千平方公里为单位。

The upshot is that Dr Campos-Arceiz and Dr Goossens suggest a change in conservation policy to recognise the value of these areas of secondary growth, which are often neglected because of an understandable desire to preserve what primary forest is left.
结果是，坎波斯-阿塞兹博士和古森博士建议改变保护政策，以认识到这些次生林的重要性。人们希望保护剩余的原始森林而忽略了次生林，这是可以理解的。

（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇量362左右）
原文出自：2022年10月22日《TE》Science & technology版块。
精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路
本文翻译整理: Irene本文编辑校对: Irene
仅供个人英语学习交流使用。

【补充资料】（来自于网络）
次生林即植物群落从次生裸地发生，通过一系列次生演替阶段所形成的森林。亦即森林通过采伐或其他自然因素破坏后，自然恢复的森林，因而有时又称天然次生林。次生林是原始林经过干扰后在次生裸地上形成的森林，可以理解为是原始森林生态系统的一种退化，生态系统的基本结构和固有功能遭破坏或丧失，生物多样性下降，稳定性和抗逆能力减弱，系统生产力降低。

 
【重点句子】（3 个）
At first sight, it looks as though Asian elephants did not get the memo. They seem to travel outside protected areas with gay abandon.
初看之下，似乎亚洲象不知道边界在哪。他们很随意地走出保护区。

They found that these elephants, though concentrated in Malaysia’s protected areas, spent more than half of their time outside them.
他们发现，这些大象虽然集中在马来西亚的保护区，但却有一半以上的时间都在保护区外。

Elephants prefer more disturbed areas, with palms and saplings to snack on, and also grasses, among them bamboo.
大象更喜欢受干扰的地区，因为那里有棕榈树和树苗可以吃，还有草，其中包括竹子。