《经济学人》双语：非洲大象被偷猎的原因是什么?

原文标题：
Conservation
The elephant in the room
What causes elephant poaching? Poor, badly governed people, mainly
动物保护
被忽视的问题
偷猎大象的原因是什么？主要是因为贫穷和治理不善等人为因素

[Paragraph 1]
EVERY DAY, thousands of rangers patrol national parks and other protected areas in Africa.
非洲每天都有数千名护林员在国家公园和其他保护区巡逻。

Their job is fraught with danger, both from hostile humans armed with automatic weapons and from the unappreciative and potentially aggressive wildlife, armed with tusks, teeth and claws, which they are helping to preserve.
他们的工作充满了危险，既要面对手持自动武器的坏人，也要面对野生动物的獠牙、牙齿和爪子。护林员正在帮助保护这些动物，而这些动物不领情且具有潜在攻击性。

But their work is important, not least because the data they collect are crucial to conservation planning.
但他们的工作很重要，特别是因为他们收集的数据对保护计划至关重要。

[Paragraph 2]
That is particularly true of data on poaching, which remains, in both senses of the word, an elephantine problem.
了解偷猎相关数据尤其重要，无论从何种意义上说，偷猎主要涉及大象问题。

Since 2006 African elephant populations have declined by around 30%. In 2021, according to Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE), a conservation programme, around 40% of elephant deaths were a result of poaching.
自2006年以来，非洲大象数量约下降了30%。2021，根据一项保护计划的数据——非法猎杀大象监测系统（MIKE），约有40%的大象死亡事件是由偷猎造成的。

[Paragraph 3]
The severity of elephant poaching varies from place to place.
各地偷猎大象的严重程度各不相同。

The MIKE data show a welcome fall in rates throughout the 2010s, but according to research published in 2020 by Scott Schlossberg of Elephants Without Borders, a charity, this can be attributed entirely to a decline in eastern Africa.
MIKE的数据显示，在整个二十一世纪 一十年代，偷猎率都出现了可喜的下降，但根据慈善机构“大象无国界组织”的斯科特·施洛斯伯格在2020年发表的研究，这完全可以归因于东非偷猎率的下降。

[Paragraph 4]
Elsewhere, there is great variation in the pressure on pachyderms.
在其他地方，大象的生存压力差异很大。

Some parks, like Garamba in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), are badly hit—with more than 90% of the carcasses found by rangers being victims of poachers.
一些国家公园受到重创（如刚果民主共和国的加兰巴）--护林员发现90%以上的大象尸体是由偷猎造成的。

In others, like Chobe, in Botswana, less than 10% of dead elephants discovered have been killed illegally.
在其他国家公园（如博茨瓦纳的乔贝）里发现的大象尸体中，只有不到10%是被非法猎杀的。

[Paragraph 5]
To untangle the factors influencing poaching, Timothy Kuiper of the University of Cape Town, Eleanor Milner-Gulland at Oxford, and a team of collaborators have analysed data collected for MIKE by rangers from 64 sites in 30 African countries over the course of 19 years.
为了弄清楚影响偷猎的因素，开普敦大学的蒂莫西·库伊珀、牛津大学的埃莉诺·米尔纳·古兰德及一些合作者分析了MIKE的数据，这些数据由护林员收集，时间跨度19年，包括30个非洲国家64个地点。

They correlated these with potentially relevant factors, both natural and human, and have published their findings in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.
他们将数据与潜在的相关因素（如自然因素和人为因素）联系起来，并在《皇家学会学报》上发表了他们的研究结果。

[Paragraph 6]
Natural variables such as habitat type, they discovered, make little difference. Human ones predominate.
他们发现，栖息地类型等自然因素几乎没有变化。人为因素占了主导。

Unsurprisingly, but nevertheless pertinently, low household wealth, poor health, poor law enforcement and poor national governance all contributed to higher rates of poaching. So did the price of ivory.
意料之中但中肯地说，家庭财富低、健康状况差、执法不力和国家治理不力等这些因素都导致了偷猎率的上升。象牙的价格也是因素之一。

[Paragraph 7]
There was one unexpected result, though—the impact of armed conflict. For there did not seem to be much.
但有一个意料之外的结论--即武装冲突的影响。因为这个因素不太多。

What impact there was, was a consequence of a few special cases in DRC, the Central African Republic and Ethiopia, rather than a general rule about young men with guns behaving badly.
是刚果民主共和国、中非共和国和埃塞俄比亚发生的一些特殊案件产生了影响，而不是持枪青年行为不端总规则产生了影响。

[Paragraph 8]
One factor that was unquantifiable, and therefore untestable, according to Dr Kuiper, was local political will to preserve wildlife.
库伊珀博士说，有一个无法量化也无法验证的因素，那就是当地保护野生动物的政治意愿。

But this study does nevertheless confirm observations made elsewhere, that the best form of conservation is a prosperous population.
但这项研究确实证实了其他地方的观察结果，即大象数量繁多说明保护野生动物的政治意愿强。

（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇量438左右）
原文出自：2023年1月14日《The Economist》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）
影响当地盗猎率的两个变因， 其中之一是贫穷，以婴儿死亡率为评估标准。 另一项变因则是贪腐。特别有意思的一点，是贫穷和贪腐两者跟当地盗猎状况的相关程度，甚至大于执法状况。

【重点句子】（3 个）
That is particularly true of data on poaching, which remains, in both senses of the word, an elephantine problem.
了解偷猎相关数据尤其重要，无论从何种意义上说，偷猎主要涉及大象问题。

Elsewhere, there is great variation in the pressure on pachyderms.
在其他地方，大象的生存压力差异很大。

Unsurprisingly, but nevertheless pertinently, low household wealth, poor health, poor law enforcement and poor national governance all contributed to higher rates of poaching. So did the price of ivory.
意料之中但中肯地说，家庭财富低、健康状况差、执法不力和国家治理不力等这些因素都导致了偷猎率的上升。象牙的价格也是因素之一。