好英语网大火中的“生物末日”：抢救澳大利亚野生动物
WATERHOLES, Australia — The convoy of vehicles fleeing a raging inferno in the forest of southeastern Australia ferried a copious cargo: 11 koalas, 15 kangaroos, five chickens, two possums, two dogs and a lorikeet.
澳大利亚水洞——在澳大利亚东南部的森林里，一个车队正在逃离肆虐的大火，车上载着五花八门的动物：11只考拉、15只袋鼠、五只鸡、两只负鼠、两条狗和一只吸蜜鹦鹉。
Susan Pulis, who runs a wildlife shelter, had rallied her friends to pack the animals in blankets and baskets and take them to safety on the coast. One friend gutted her downstairs bedroom to house five of the kangaroos. Ms. Pulis has kept the youngest joeys in quilt pouches in another’s living room.
经营野生动物庇护所的苏珊·普利斯(Susan Pulis)召集朋友们用毯子和篮子将这些动物打包，然后将它们安置在海岸的安全地带。一位朋友把楼下卧室清空，安置了5只袋鼠。普利斯将最小的幼袋鼠们放在另一个客厅的棉布袋里。
周一，澳大利亚雷蒙德岛，苏珊·普利斯在一间被改造成临时避难所的卧室里喂袋鼠。
“Since the fires, they are very different,” she said of the animals, “very on edge.”
“自从发生火灾以来，它们变得不一样了，”她指的是这些动物，“它们非常恐慌。”
As wildfires have killed at least 24 people, destroyed more than 1,400 homes and ravaged 15 million acres, they have also inflicted a grievous toll on Australia’s renowned wildlife. Hundreds of millions of animals, many found on no other continent, may have perished, according to some estimates, devastating the country’s unique ecosystems.
野火已经造成至少24人丧生，1400多所房屋被毁，6万平方公里的土地遭到破坏，而且对澳大利亚著名的野生动植物造成了惨重的损失。据估计，可能有数以亿计的动物已经死亡，其中许多是其他大陆上没有的，这破坏了该国独特的生态系统。
“We will have taken many species that weren’t threatened close to extinction, if not to extinction,” said Kingsley Dixon, an ecologist and botanist at Curtin University, in Perth.
位于珀斯科廷大学(Curtin University)的生态学家和植物学家金斯利·迪克森(Kingsley Dixon)说：“大火让很多动物接近灭绝或者已经灭绝。”
Even the animals that survived, scampering away or hunkering down, may die from dehydration or starvation, Professor Dixon added. “It’s a biological Armageddon rarely seen,” he said.
迪克森还说，即使是幸存下来的动物，无论是逃脱还是留在原处，也可能死于脱水或饥饿。他说：“这是罕见的生物末日。”
Wildlife in Australia was already under threat before these fires, as humans have changed the landscape. Agribusiness is among the top contributors to deforestation, which decimates wildlife populations, scientists say.
由于人类改变了生态面貌，澳大利亚的野生动物在这些大火之前已经受到威胁。科学家说，农业企业是造成森林砍伐的首要原因之一，这导致野生动植物数量大大减少。
The astronomical estimates of animal losses and the heart-rending images of singed koalas during this disastrous fire season have spread the concern worldwide. Quilters in the Netherlands have made mittens for koalas with burned paws. New Zealanders are stitching joey pouches and bat wraps.
在这个灾难性的火灾季节中，以天文数字估算的动物损失、被烧伤的考拉令人心碎的图像已经引起了全世界人们的关注。荷兰的棉纺织者为爪子烧伤的考拉制作了手套。新西兰人正在缝制幼袋鼠布袋和蝙蝠襁褓。
Some experts have been dubious of the high numbers that have spread widely on social media, which are based on estimates of population densities of mammals, birds and reptiles from previously published studies. The death toll is arrived at by multiplying the number of animals expected to inhabit a given area by the total acreage burned.
一些专家对社交媒体上广泛传播的巨大数字表示怀疑，这些数字是从先前发表的研究中基于哺乳动物，鸟类和爬行动物的种群密度估算出来的。死亡数字是用给定区域的预估动物数量乘以过火面积。
But it is impossible to know how many animals managed to flee, for instance. Limited access to the burned lands, as well as the difficulty of documenting individual animal deaths, complicate efforts to assess the scale of the damage.
然而，人们无法知道有多少动物逃了出来。难以进入被烧毁的地区，以及难以记录每个动物的死亡，都使损失规模的评估变得复杂。
Whatever the numbers, it is clear that the devastation is immense, scientists say.
科学家们说，无论数字是多少，破坏之巨是显而易见的。
“It’s dangerous to put a number to them,” said Corey Bradshaw, a fellow in ecology at Flinders University in Adelaide, in the south. But, he added, “there’s no question there has been deaths.”
“数字会引起争议，”南部阿德莱德的弗林德斯大学生态学研究员科里·布拉德肖(Corey Bradshaw)说。但是，他补充说：“有死亡是毫无疑问的。”
At least a quarter of the koala population may have been lost in New South Wales, according to various estimates. Significant numbers of the southern brown bandicoot and the long-footed potoroo, a kind of wallaby whose entire habitat has been ravaged by fire, have also most likely been lost.
根据各种估算，新南威尔士州可能失去了四分之一的考拉。大量的澳棕短鼻袋狸和长足的长鼻袋鼠很有可能已经死亡，后者是一种沙袋鼠，其整个栖息地都被大火吞噬。
On Kangaroo Island, off the coast of South Australia, experts said thousands of kangaroos and koalas had been killed in the fire that has now ravaged a third of the island. There are also grave fears for the fate of a subspecies of glossy black cockatoos, of which there were only about 300 to 370 remaining before the fires.
专家说，在南澳大利亚州沿海的袋鼠岛上，成千上万的袋鼠和考拉在大火中丧生，这场大火现在已经摧毁了该岛的三分之一。人们还非常担心一种黑凤头鹦鹉亚种的命运，该亚种在大火之前只剩下约300至370只。
It is not only wildlife that has been ravaged. In Batlow, 285 miles southwest of Sydney, a video taken by a reporter showed the scorched corpses of sheep and cows strewn along a highway. Carcasses like these have raised biological fears around the country.
被破坏的不仅是野生动植物。在悉尼西南459公里外的巴特洛(Batlow)，记者拍摄的一段视频显示，沿公路散落着烧焦的绵羊和母牛的尸体。这样的残骸在全国引起了人们对生物安全的恐慌。
Buchan, a farming region in the southern state of Victoria, has also been badly affected, with farmers having to put down burned livestock at a time when drought had already made earning a living nearly impossible. Farmers in the nearby town of Bairnsdale said that a cattle sale was planned Thursday to unload their remaining livestock, some of which may be injured.
南部维多利亚州的农业地区布坎也受到了严重影响，在干旱已经使人们几乎无法谋生的时候，农民不得不杀死被烧伤的牲畜。附近城镇拜恩斯代尔(Baindsdale)的农民说，计划于周四进行家畜售卖，倾销剩余的牲畜，其中一些可能受了伤。
Tina Moon, a farmer in Sarsfield, a town in Victoria’s southeast, said many burned cattle in the region had to be euthanized. She said she had saved her house, but had no idea how she would make an income in the coming months.
维多利亚东南部小镇萨斯菲尔德的农民蒂娜·穆恩(Tina Moon)说，该地区许多被烧伤的牛不得不接受安乐死。她说她保住了自己的房子，但不知道未来几个月要如何谋生。
To protect Australia’s wildlife, rescuers like Ms. Pulis, who fled the forest for the coast late last month, are battling immense changes to the country’s landscape on a tiny scale. They cannot save Australia’s wildlife on their own, but their work is reinforcing scientists’ judgment that intervention will be increasingly necessary to protect animals on a hotter, more fiery planet.
上月底，普利斯从森林逃往海边，为了保护澳大利亚的野生动物，像她这样的救援人员正在小范围内与澳大利亚国土上的巨大变化作斗争。他们无法凭一己之力拯救澳大利亚的野生动物，但他们的工作正在强化科学家的判断：在一个愈发炎热、愈发火热的星球上，为了保护动物，干预将越来越有必要。
Around the country, people have banded together to help feed, find and rehabilitate survivors.
在全国各地，人们团结起来，帮助养活、寻找幸存动物，协助它们的康复。
In the fire-ravaged town of Mallacoota, one man says he has rescued nine koalas, for which the community is working to build a shelter. Others have left out seed, water and grasses for dehydrated and hungry fauna.
在大火肆虐的马拉库塔镇，一名男子表示，他已救出了九只考拉，社区正在为它们建造避难所。还有一些人把种子、水和草留给脱水和饥饿的动物。
“I know it doesn’t bring back properties, but for some it can give a sense of not giving up the fight,” said Katharine Catelotti, of Sydney, whose family lost a small shack in Wollomombi, more than 300 miles north of the city, and has been putting feed out for wildlife as well as keeping a small number in her home.
“我知道这不能挽回损失，但对一些人来说，它可以给人带来没有放弃战斗的感觉，”悉尼的凯瑟琳·凯特洛蒂(Katharine Catelotti)说，她家在悉尼以北480公里外的沃罗曼比失去了一个小棚屋，她一直喂养野生动物，并在家里饲养了少量野生动物。
The task for others has been more grim. One woman told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that she was checking the pouches of dead kangaroos for joeys and marking the ones without them so that other searchers would not have to repeat her efforts.
其他人的任务则更为严峻。一名女性告诉澳大利亚广播公司，她正在检查死亡袋鼠的育儿袋，看看里面有没有小袋鼠，如果没有就做上标记，这样其他搜寻人员就不必重复她的工作。
For Ms. Pulis, evacuating her few animals — which had already been rescued, some of them more than once, from starvation, dog attacks and car accidents — was simply part of life.
对普利斯来说，疏散她自己的少量动物本来就是生活的一部分。这些动物已经获救，其中一些是不止一次地从饥饿、犬类袭击和车祸中死里逃生。
In 2013, she founded a wildlife shelter on Raymond Island, a town just off the coast, with the intention of rehabilitating injured and abandoned creatures. In August, she relocated to Waterholes, 30 miles inland, because of the clearing of the island’s trees, which had made it impossible for her to release the koalas into an environment where they could find sufficient food.
2013年，她在离海岸不远的雷蒙德岛创建了一个野生动物收容所，帮助受伤和被遗弃的动物康复。今年8月，她搬到了内陆50公里处的水洞，因为雷蒙德岛上的树木已被砍伐，她无法将考拉放归到一个能找到充足食物的环境中。
Somehow, her property in Waterholes, threatened twice by fires this season, remains standing, a lush oasis at the end of a blackened road in the eastern Victoria region of East Gippsland, where smoldering and fallen trees, charred earth and melted road signs stretch for hundreds of miles.
在这个季节，她在水洞的房子受到两次火灾威胁依然屹立。在维多利亚州东部的东吉普斯兰，闷燃倒下的树木、烧焦的土地和熔化的路标绵延数百英里，她的房子位于一条被熏黑的道路尽头一片郁郁葱葱的绿洲。
“It’s a holocaust,” Ms. Pulis said as she drove toward her home on Monday for the first time since blistering heat brought through a ferocious fire front.
“这是一场大屠杀，”周一，普利斯在驱车回家的路上说，这是凶猛的大火带来高热以来的第一次。
Cool weather and rain have since brought a reprieve. But smoke still hung in the air. As she reached the track leading to her property, Ms. Pulis began to cry.
凉爽的天气和雨水带来了暂时的缓解。但空气中仍然烟雾弥漫。当她走到通往她那栋房子的车道时，普利斯哭了起来。
“This was my koala feed,” she said of the scorched eucalyptus trees, which used to provide leaves for her animals. “It was absolutely alive.”
“这是我喂考拉的食物，”她说的是烧焦的桉树，以前她用这些树叶来喂动物。“它之前绝对是活的。”
At her property, Ms. Pulis tended to the stressed and dehydrated kangaroos she had been forced to leave behind. She gave each an injection to relieve their pain — they had most likely hopped so frantically away from the burning forest that they had injured themselves — and refreshed their water, which was contaminated by ash.
在那栋房子里，普利斯照顾着那些备受压力、已经脱水的袋鼠。她给每只袋鼠打了一针，减轻它们的痛苦，给它们更换了被灰尘污染的水，它们很可能是非常疯狂地从燃烧的森林中跳出来，以至于受了伤。
On Saturday, as yards-high flames threatened her property for a second time, Ms. Pulis’s friend Jason Nicholson defended it with a hose and hundreds of gallons of water.
周六，数米高的大火第二次威胁到普利斯的房子，她的朋友杰森·尼克尔森(Jason Nicholson)用一根软管和数百加仑的水保护了这里。
Neither could believe that it remained intact — the garden surrounding it still green, with cockatoos calling from the trees. They said they expected that wildlife, pushed out by the fires, would congregate in what was now a garden of Eden among miles of decimated forest.
谁也不敢相信，它竟能完好无损——周围的花园依然绿意盎然，有鹦鹉在树上叫个不停。他们说，预计被大火驱赶的野生动物会从数英里被毁的森林中聚集到现在这座伊甸园里。
“The difference is here, you hear the birds,” Mr. Nicholson said. “Out there, it’s quiet. Deadly quiet.”
“区别就在这里，你能听到鸟叫，”尼克尔森说。“这里以外的地方很安静。致命的安静。”