【英语外刊】精读|词汇精讲|时代周刊|云南大象出走引发对生态环境保护的关注

China's herd of wandering elephants many be climate-change migrants

Related words:

1. a heard of elephants/ cattle
2. a flock of birds/sheep
3. National Nature Reserve
4. environmental degradation = environmental deterioration 环境恶化
5. trek = a long and difficult journey 长途旅行
6. increasing human disturbance 人类干扰的增加
7. decreasing availability of food and water 食物和水的日益减少
8. turn something over to something 把... 改用于 Eg. There is a new plan to turn the land over to wind farming.
9. plantation 种植园
10. conservationist = environmentalist 环保主义者
11. biodiversity 生物多样性
12. human-wildlife coexistence
13. set up dedicated nature reserves 设立专门的自然保护区
14. Buying back land from farmers is also a possiblity.
15. harsh penalities = severe publishment

Vocabulary:

1. captivate = enchant 使着迷 be captivated by Eg, The children were captivated by her stories.
2. pilfer = steal v 小偷小摸
3. scoff = eat a lot of something quickly 狼吞虎咽
4. amble + adv/prep(比如 amble down） = walk at a slow and relaxed speed = stroll Eg. We ambled down to the beach.
5. spur(刺激） sb to dosth 刺激/激励某人做某事，不用总是用motivate或encourage eg. spur economic growth 刺激经济增长 on the spur of the moment 一时兴起
6. levrage sth 充分利用 n, 影响力，杠杆作用
7. Not least = especially 尤其，特别
8. A is the cornerstone of B A是B的最重要的部分
9. spell(招致）trouble/ disaster/ danger/ a dire future

Nice sentence:

1. (象群北上的原因）Environmental degradation may have spurred them to set out on this unprecedented trek. To be specific, habitat loss and increasing human disturbance are more likely to lead to the decreasing availability of food and water. Elephants can eat mountains of corn and pineapples every day, and much of their traditional habit near Xishuangbanna has been turned into rubber plantations.
2. （人象矛盾） In addition, China's wild elephants have doubled to more than 300 since the 1990s, while their habitat has been shrinking by nearly two-thirds. Once they got a good taste for the high-quality food readily available in crop fields, they continued to seek it out, ambling through farmlands and villages. This process would cause enormous farmers damage and trigger the rise of potential human-elephant conflict. The intensity of the conflict can start as just a nuisance and quickly grow to the point where people or elephants get killed, although killing elephants is punishable by extremely harsh penalties. Unfortunately, this is already happening in some Asian countries and spells a dire future for elephants if we do not reverse the trend.
3. (保护生态重要性）We cannot ignore the effect of rapid development of the local economy on the loss of wildlife habitat. Clear waters and green mountains are as valuable as mountains of gold and silver(绿水青山等于金山银山）. A healthy and complete ecosystem is the cornerstone of sustainable economic development.
4. (人象冲突）