GETTING THE RICH TO PAY FOR CONSERVATION

Hunting in Africa and Durham bring spectacular benefits for wildlife

让有钱人为动物保护买单

非洲和达拉谟的狩猎活动为野生动物带来了可观的益处

My Spectator article on the similarity between trophy hunting in Africa and grouse shooting in Durham. Both have huge benefits for non-target species of wildlife.

我在《Spectator》上的文章论述了非洲的战利品狩猎和达拉谟猎杀松鸡活动之间的相似性。两者都对非狩猎目标的野生动物带来了巨大好处。

The vast Bubye Valley Conservancy in southern Zimbabwe is slightly larger than County Durham, as well as much hotter and drier. Yet both contain abundant wildlife thanks almost entirely to the hunting of game. In Bubye Valley, it’s lions and buffalo that are the targets; in the Durham dales, it’s grouse. But the effect is the same — a spectacular boost to other wildlife, privately funded.

辽阔的布比谷保护区位于津巴布韦南部，其面积比（苏格兰）达拉谟郡稍大，炎热干旱的程度则远过之。但两地的野生动物保育状况良好，这几乎完全得益于商业狩猎活动的展开。在布比谷主要的狩猎目标是狮子和水牛，在达拉谟谷地则是松鸡。尽管作为狩猎目标的动物不同，但效果是相同的——（狩猎目标之外的）其它野生物种的数量因为私人资金的赞助获得了明显的增长。

Bubye Valley was a cattle ranch, owned by Unilever, until 1994 when it was turned over to wildlife. A double electric fence was put round the entire 850,000-acre reserve. Gradually the buffalo, giraffe, wildebeest, zebra and antelope numbers grew. Elephants and rhinos were moved there from areas more vulnerable to poaching, and the conservancy now has the third-largest black rhino population in the world. Seventeen lions were introduced and there are now more than 500 — so many that they are reducing the numbers of cheetahs and wild dogs as well as their normal prey, and may need to be culled.

布比谷曾是一座畜牧场，属于联合利华，直到1994年才改建为野生动物园。保护区占地面积达85万英亩，设有双层电网围栏。其后园区的水牛、长颈鹿、牛羚、斑马和羚羊数量逐步增长。大象和犀牛从那些更容易被盗猎的地区转移过来，现在该保护区拥有世界第三大黑犀牛种群。园区引进了17头狮子，现在已经发展到五百多头了。由于狮子太多，已经影响到了猎豹和野狗及其主要猎物的数量，可能不得不宰杀一部分。

Being hot, dry and featureless, the thick bush of Bubye Valley does not make good photo-tourism country, so the reserve derives income from selling licences to rich hunters to stalk and shoot buffalo, lion and other species. Shocking? No: the income from the licences — as well as the meat — is shared with local communities, and goes to build clinics and schools. The conservancy also employs hundreds of people. This is a self-funding conservation triumph in which the rich pay and the poor benefit.

布比谷茂密的灌木丛干旱炎热，单调乏味，不是观光摄影的好地方。所以保护区向富有的狩猎爱好者出售许可证，允许他们追踪猎杀水牛和狮子等动物。太过分了？不，出售许可证（以及动物肉）的收入被当地居民共享，并用于建设诊所和学校。保护区还提供了几百个就业机会。这是个自给自足、富人出钱穷人获利的动物保护成功案例。

It’s the same all over the world: properly controlled hunting provides an incentive and a reward for conservation. One cold, foggy morning in early May this year, at 4 a.m., I was sitting in a little tent on a Durham moor watching what I think is Britain’s most spectacular wildlife sight: the lek, or communal display, of male black grouse. As more than 25 black-and-white cocks with red eyebrows strutted their stuff just a few yards from where I sat, I was serenaded by curlews, golden plovers, lapwings, snipe, redshanks, oyster-catchers, red grouse, partridge, skylarks, cuckoos and many other birds.

科学管理的狩猎活动为动物保护提供激励和经济支持，这在全世界都是成立的。今年五月一个寒冷、雾气弥漫的早上，凌晨四点钟，我坐在达拉谟高沼地【译注：moor或moorland是一种特殊地貌，主要特点有：较高地势，酸性土壤，低矮植被，以石南丛为典型，不宜耕种，常包含湿地，中文多译作高沼或漠泽】一个小帐篷里目睹了或许是英国最壮丽的野生动物奇观：黑松鸡的求偶仪式。当25只长着黑白两色羽毛和一对红眉羽的雄松鸡在离我几码处大摇大摆地展示性征时，我听到了一场鸟类的大合唱，麻鹬，金珩，田凫，鹬，红脚鹬，蛎鹬，红松鸡，鹧鸪，云雀，布谷鸟……还有很多其它鸟类。

The reason for this extraordinary abundance, which you would not find in the hills of Wales, Dartmoor or the Lake District, is simple — gamekeepers. Grouse moors have a zero-tolerance policy towards foxes, crows, magpies and stoats, all of which eat the eggs and chicks of ground-nesting birds. In Britain today, where the number of crows and foxes has rocketed because of road kill, landfill and a lack of natural predators, ground-nesting birds cannot thrive without human intervention.

在威尔士山谷、达特穆尔和湖区【编注：地处英格兰西北部坎布里亚郡】可看不到如此丰富的物种，原因很简单：因为这些地方没有猎场管理员。高沼松鸡猎场对狐狸、乌鸦、喜鹊和黄鼠狼赶尽杀绝，这些动物以在地面筑巢鸟类的蛋和雏鸟为食。目前英国由于垃圾填埋场和公路上被车辆撞死的动物遗体提供了大量食物，再加上缺乏天敌，导致乌鸦和狐狸的数量激增，地面筑巢鸟类如果没有人为干预就很难繁衍兴旺。

It is thanks to gamekeepers that black grouse numbers, after declining for decades, have almost doubled in recent years in the Pennines. With the help of the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, black grouse are beginning to recolonise dales from which they were lost decades ago.

由于猎场管理员的工作，奔宁山脉的黑松鸡数量在下滑了几十年后又在几年内几乎翻了一番。在狩猎与野生动物保护信托基金的帮助下，黑松鸡已经重新在谷地安家落户。这之前它们已经从谷地消失几十年了。

On another North Pennine moor, a survey of breeding birds was carried out this spring. The results have gobsmacked conservationists. On this one grouse moor, there were at least 400 pairs of curlews breeding. This is about as many as in the whole of Wales. There were 800 pairs of lapwings, 100 pairs of golden plovers, 50 pairs of oyster-catchers, 40 pairs of redshanks, 200 pairs of snipe, 50 pairs of woodcocks, 60 pairs of common sandpipers.

今年春天在北奔宁山脉另一片高沼地开展了一项关于鸟类繁育状况的调查。其结果令环保主义者们目瞪口呆。这片高沼有至少400对麻鹬在那里交配。这几乎相当于全威尔士的总量了。此外还有800对田凫，100对金珩，50对蛎鹬，40对红脚鹬，200对猎鸟，50对山鹬，60对滨鹬。

The report stated:

报告指出：

“To conclude a very special place for birds in my opinion & the figures speak for themselves as does the visual spectacle of the waders in the breeding areas. A very well managed estate & home for a lot of key bird species.”

“我认为这里非常适宜鸟类生活。无论统计数字还是繁育区中涉禽类的壮观景象都能证明这一点。这座运转良好的庄园是很多重要鸟类的家园。”

and the person who did the survey commented privately to the estate owner:

调查者私下里对庄园主表示：

“I travel widely around the globe studying breeding birds including the arctic circle which is the bread basket for all wader breeding in the world & even there I have never seen the density of wader breeding in such a small area ! Dartmoor is now down to a single pair of curlew & 3 pair of lapwing on the whole moor (365 SQ miles) which always fail due to corvids ,foxes etc ! Only on the high moor are there about 4 pair of dunlin but that is it. Golden plover extinct breeder & merlins among others. This is the stark contrast & reality of a moorland with no control & management in place compared with the jewel you have created and the sanctuary for our endangered wader species ! A superb place for birds across the board & a credit to the team involved !”

“为了研究鸟类繁育状况，我走遍了世界各地，包括涉禽类的主要产地北极圈。但就连我也没见过如此高的繁育密度！达特穆尔365平方英里的湿地中现在只剩一对麻鹬和三对田凫，而且因为乌鸦和狐狸等动物的干扰，繁育过程几乎总是失败！只有高沼里有4对黑腹滨鹬，其它地方就看不到了。金珩和灰背隼等鸟类的繁育行为已经绝迹了。这就是一个缺乏管控的高沼地面对的现实，和你们所创造的这座美妙的濒危涉禽类庇护所之间的差距太大了！这里是所有鸟类的天堂，你们的管理团队真是太赞了！”

In the early 2000s, at Otterburn in Northumberland, the trust did a neat experiment in which two areas had gamekeepers and two did not, then they swapped for four years. The results were astonishing. With gamekeepers, the breeding success of golden plovers, curlews and lapwings more than doubled, and their numbers rocketed. This is from the GWCT’s website:

该信托基金于21世纪初在诺森伯兰郡的奥特博恩进行了一项很能说明问题的实验：将两片猎场的管理员调到两片无人管理的地区。四年后，结果是惊人的。有了管理员后，金珩、麻鹬和田凫的数量激增，繁育成功率增长了一倍还多。下列数据援引自GWCT的网站：

“The breeding success of some species was significantly improved with predator removal (see Figure 1). For lapwing, golden plover, curlew, red grouse and meadow pipit, on average a three-fold improvement was seen, from 23% of pairs fledging young without predator removal to 64% of pairs fledging young with predator removal…

“对掠食动物的驱除明显提高了一些物种的繁育成功率（如图1所示）。田凫、金珩、麻鹬、红松鸡和草地鹨育有雏鸟的配偶比例平均翻了三倍，由23%增至64%…

For all the wader species (curlew, golden plover, lapwing, we found increases in abundance with predator removal (mean annual change +37%) and decreases in abundance with no predator removal (mean annual change -28%), but the changes in abundance were statistically significantly different only for curlew (with a three-year lag) and lapwing.”

进行掠食动物驱除的地区所有涉禽类（麻鹬，金珩，田凫）的数量均有增加（平均年增长37%），而未驱除的地区则有下降（平均减少28%），但是只有麻鹬（三年延迟）和田凫的数量变化具有统计显著性。”

All these birds thrive in the Pennines (and the Angus glens of Scotland) precisely because red grouse, the sportsman’s quarry, also thrive in the absence of their nest predators. As well as tasting delicious, red grouse are ornithologically special: arguably the British Isles’ only endemic bird, found nowhere else in the world. Officially a subspecies of the willow grouse, they look very different (refusing to go white in winter, for example) and have uniquely adapted to a diet of heather, a plant that also thrives here more than anywhere else.

所有这些鸟类在奔宁山脉（以及苏格兰安格斯峡谷）之所以能够繁衍兴旺，恰恰是因为红松鸡是狩猎爱好者的主要猎物，而为了保证有足够多的红松鸡供人猎杀，就必须驱除那些掏鸟蛋和雏鸟的食肉动物。红松鸡不仅是美味的食物，而且在鸟类学上有特殊意义：它可能是唯一一种只出产在不列颠群岛的鸟类，世界上其它地方都找不到。作为柳松鸡的一个亚种，它们的外观很特别（比如它们不会在冬天换上白色的羽毛），并且演化出了以石南为食的独特食性——石南属植物在这里的产量也远多于其它地方。

To have developed techniques of moorland management, including heather-burning and the control of ticks and parasitic worms, that allow red grouse to thrive wild in numbers that rival the wildebeest of the Serengeti is an achievement in itself. To have done so while benefiting other wildlife and providing employment and welcome income to the dales and glens is magnificent.

拥有充分发展高沼泽管理技术（包括石南焚烧，蜱虫和寄生虫防治），使野生红松鸡的数量堪比塞伦盖蒂的角马群，这本身就是一大成就。与此同时还顺便让其它野生动物获益，还能提供就业机会并为谷地带来经济收益就更令人惊艳了。

Grouse shooting has saved this special habitat, with its rare mosses, spiders and moths, from being ruined, while making very little demand on the taxpayer — indeed while paying hefty taxes. Managing heather moorland for grouse means not planting it with subsidised Sitka spruce trees, or over-grazing it with subsidised sheep, or wrecking it with subsidised windmills.

猎杀松鸡的活动拯救了这片独特的栖息地，生存在这里的珍贵苔藓，蜘蛛和飞蛾因此幸免于难，而这一切只需要花纳税人很少的钱——实际上猎场还是纳税大户。经营一片石南高沼意味着不用在这里种那些享受补贴的北美云杉，也不会被吃补贴的绵羊啃个精光，或者被靠补贴运转的风力磨坊给毁了。

It is a myth, by the way, that moorland is worse at retaining water and preventing flooding than forest. Spruce plantations in the peaty uplands lack absorbent mossy undergrowth and are scarred by deep ditches, which increase the rate of runoff during storms. Moorland owners have blocked the ditches they were bribed to dig in the 1970s. They now look with bemusement across the fence at the Forestry Commission digging new ditches in deep peat — for which they would be prosecuted if they did it.

顺便说一下，很多人以为高沼涵养水源和防洪的能力不如森林，事实并非如此。在泥碳质高地种植的北美云杉林缺乏附着在树下具有吸水能力的苔藓，而且种植过程会留下很深的沟壑，在风暴来临时会有更高的水土流失率。高沼地的主人已经填平了那些在1970年代因受补贴而挖的沟。他们现在正困惑地看着篱笆外的林业委员会在泥炭地深处挖新沟——要是他们自己也这么干的话就会被起诉。

Other rare, red-listed birds are also thriving on this one moor, which is typical of all the North Pennine grouse moors in its wildlife: cuckoos, ring ouzels, tree pipits, whinchats, pied flycatchers, marsh tits. And merlins — Britain’s smallest and rarest falcon is doing well here, watched over by gamekeepers in case egg collectors come calling. Merlins rarely succeed in breeding if foxes or crows are on the prowl.

其它稀有濒危鸟类也在这片高沼地兴旺繁衍：布谷鸟、环颈鸫、林鷚、野翁、斑姬鹟和沼泽山雀等，都是北奔宁山脉高沼松鸡猎场的典型野生动物。灰背隼——英国最小也最稀有的隼——在猎场管理员的照料下繁殖情况也很不错。一旦集卵器发出呼叫，管理员们就会过来检查。否则如果有狐狸或乌鸦在附近游荡，灰背隼就很难繁殖成功。

The same is true of hen harriers, the bird that the RSPB makes a huge fuss about because it alleges that gamekeepers persecute them — as some may occasionally do, because hen harriers like to congregate in small breeding colonies and eat grouse. Hen harriers, which are ground-nesting birds vulnerable to foxes, are thriving in Scotland, especially on fox-free islands such as the Orkneys or in places where gamekeepers control fox numbers. But they have struggled to recolonise England. An experiment in the 1990s at Langholm in southern Scotland proved the point: when hen harriers increased, grouse numbers crashed, so gamekeepers lost their jobs, at which point foxes returned and hen harrier numbers also crashed.

白尾鹞的情况也是如此。RSPB（皇家鸟类保护协会）在这个问题上没事找事，指控猎场管理员们残杀白尾鹞——偶尔是这样，因为白尾鹞喜欢扎堆在一个很小的繁殖地，而且捕食松鸡。白尾鹞是地面筑巢的鸟类，很怕狐狸。它们在苏格兰的数量有了明显的增长，特别是在奥克尼群岛这样没有狐狸的岛屿，或者狐狸数量受到控制的猎场。但白尾鹞在英格兰的繁育情况则不容乐观。1990年代在郎霍尔姆进行的一项实验证明了这一点：白尾鹞数量的增加会导致松鸡数量明显下降，于是猎场就会关门，然后狐狸就回来了，白尾鹞的数量随之大跌。

Last year 12 hen harriers nested in England. The seven nests under the control of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds reared just one chick. The other five nests, not controlled by the RSPB, reared 17 chicks. Yet the RSPB has the cheek to lecture private landowners on how to protect hen harriers.

去年有12只白尾鹞在英格兰筑巢。其中由RSPB监控的7座鸟巢只繁殖了一只雏鸟。另外5座RSPB管不着的鸟巢繁殖了17只雏鸟。就这样RSPB还腆着脸教私有猎场主怎么保护白尾鹞呢。

You will hear little of this from the BBC. An independent review of the BBC’s impartiality by Heather Hancock, now chairman of the Food Standards Agency, in 2014 found that BBC newsrooms had an unhealthy dependence on the RSPB’s vast press operation for all of their countryside coverage. Chris Packham, a BBC presenter and vice-president of the RSPB, goes around demanding that the ‘evil’ pastime of grouse shooting be banned, apparently indifferent to the collapse in numbers of curlews and black grouse that would undoubtedly follow. (The BBC has now announced that it has launched an investigation into Packham’s outbursts, following a complaint from the Countryside Alliance.)

BBC可不会告诉你这些。2014年Heather Hancock（现任食品标准局主席）进行的一项关于BBC中立性的独立评估指出，BBC新闻部门在野外生态问题上的报道对RSPB的大规模媒体公关偏听偏信。BBC主持人Chris Packham（同时也是RSPB副主席）四处鼓吹禁止松鸡猎杀这种”邪恶”的游戏，完全无视这样做肯定会造成麻鹬和黑松鸡数量的大幅减少。（由于乡村联盟的抗议，BBC已宣布会调查Packham的煽动性言论。）

Throughout the world, hunters benefit conservation. In America, this is explicitly recognised, with hunting licence fees used to fund conservation. Even the International Union for the Conservation of Nature recognises that ‘recreational hunting can contribute to biodiversity conservation’. In Africa, the contrast is stark between Kenya, which banned hunting in 1977 and has seen its wildlife populations plunge by 70 per cent, and Namibia, which encourages trophy hunting and has seen wildlife populations increase steadily.

全世界的商业狩猎活动都对动物保护有利。在美国，人们已经明确认识到了这一点，并且出售狩猎许可证的收入已被用于资助动物保护事业。甚至国际自然保护协会也认识到”娱乐性的商业狩猎活动有助于保护生物多样性”。在非洲，对比也一目了然。肯尼亚于1977年禁止捕猎，该国野生动物数量降低了70%；而鼓励战利品狩猎活动的纳米比亚则见证了野生动物数量的稳步上升。

Here is an extract from a 2014 article about Kenya’s wildlife:

下面这段话节选自2014年发表的一篇关于肯尼亚野生动物的文章：

“Kenya’s much-praised ban on hunting, in fact, has had an impact opposite to its intent: wild animals are disappearing at an accelerating rate.“Charismatic megafauna” — elephants, lions, rhinos, the larger antelopes — are in a true death spiral. When Kenya’s hunting ban was passed in 1977 in response to the “Ivory Wars” that were ravaging the nation’s elephants, it was hailed as a new and progressive paradigm for wildlife management. With the hunting pressure off, animal lovers opined, the game would bounce back. And it’s true that elephants did recover modestly over the ensuring two decades. But now the slaughter has begun anew, driven by an unrelenting demand from a prosperous Asia for ivory objets d’art. Meanwhile, everything else is going down the tubes, including carnivores and antelopes. By best estimates, Kenya’s wildlife has declined by more than 70 percent over the past 20 years.

“肯尼亚备受赞誉的狩猎禁令其实是好心办了坏事：野生动物消失的速度越来越快。那些’迷人的大型动物’——大象、狮子、犀牛、大型羚羊——已经陷入一个死亡螺旋。1977年，肯尼亚为应对屠杀该国大象的所谓’象牙战争’而通过狩猎禁令，这一举措曾作为动物保护的先进典型受到广泛推崇。动物保护主义者们认为，随着狩猎压力的减轻，野生动物数量会逐渐恢复。大象的数量的确在之后20年内有一定程度的回升。但是现在，随着亚洲新兴国家对象牙工艺品的需求日趋强劲，盗猎行为死灰复燃。与此同时，其它物种也受到了影响，包括食肉动物和羚羊。即便是最乐观的估计也认为肯尼亚野生动物数量在过去20年间下降了超过70%。

What happened? While the ban played well in the developed world, it was catastrophic for the people who lived in the rural hinterlands of Kenya – the places where wildlife actually exists. Basically, folks out in the bush had the responsibility for maintaining wildlife on their lands, but they were deprived of any benefit from the animals. Such a situation is intolerable for subsistence pastoralists and farmers.

所以到底发生了什么？狩猎禁令在发达国家没什么问题，但对于那些肯尼亚偏远地区的居民来说则是灾难性的——那些需要保护的野生动物恰好生活在这种地方。总而言之，生活在灌木丛里的部落承担着保护当地野生动物的责任，但他们却不能从这些动物身上获利。这对那些处在勉强维生的低水平经济中的农牧民来说是无法容忍的。

Subsequent to the ban, they could not respond – legally – when an elephant raided their maize and stomped their goats, or when a lion killed a cow. But laws made in Nairobi are seldom if ever applied with rigor in the Kenyan bush. Even as animal rights groups lionized Kenya’s no-kill policy and urged its adoption across Africa, the killing has continued unabated. Carnivores are poisoned, antelope snared, elephants speared and shot: Crops can thus be raised and the livestock grazed in peace.

由于禁令的存在，当地人没有合法的手段防止大象闯入玉米地踩死山羊，或者狮子杀死他们的牛。但中央政府制定的法律在肯尼亚的灌木丛里几乎从未被严格执行过。就在动物权利团体大肆吹捧肯尼亚禁猎政策并要求将其推广到全非洲时，杀戮在继续，没有丝毫减弱的迹象。食肉动物被毒死，羚羊落入陷阱，大象被刺死或射杀……只有这样才能保住庄稼，让家畜安静地吃草。

Michael Norton-Griffiths, who has served as the senior ecologist for Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park and the manager of the Eastern Sahel Program for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, likened the situation to owning a goat. Assume, says Norton-Griffiths that you’re a poor pastoralist in rural Kenya, and your assets consist of a goat. You can eat this goat, or milk it. You can sell it, gaining hard currency that you can use to buy necessities. Or you can breed it, increasing your asset base in the form of another goat. But now imagine that a law is passed that forbids you to eat, sell, or breed that goat. In fact, the only thing you can do with it is allow tourists to take pictures of it. Even then, you obtain no benefit; the money derived from the tourists photographing the goat goes to the owner of the “eco-lodge” they are patronizing. By substituting wildlife for the goat, says Norton-Griffiths, you have the situation that exists in Kenya today.”

坦桑尼亚塞伦盖蒂国家公园资深生态学家、国际自然保护协会东萨赫勒项目主管 Michael Norton-Griffiths将这比做养羊：假设你是生活在肯尼亚乡下的一个贫困牧民，你的全部财产就是一头山羊。你可以吃了它，或者挤羊奶。你也可以把它卖了，用换来的硬通货购买生活必须品。或者你也可以用这头羊配种，再生一只羊增加你的资产基础。想象一下，现在法律规定你不能吃掉或卖掉你的羊，也不能配种繁殖。事实上，你只能让游客给你的羊拍照。甚至这点钱也不是你的；游客拍山羊交的钱全都归了开’生态旅店’的人。Norton-Griffiths表示：把山羊换成野生动物，得到的就是肯尼亚的现状。”

Yet far from being thanked for their efforts, the conservationists of Bubye Valley and the Durham dales are under almost constant attack from animal-welfare groups and their allies in government and the media. The critics hate the idea that rich people are pouring millions into saving the best habitats and species in exchange for harvesting some free-range meat. They seem to prefer conservation fully nationalised and bloodless, even if unsuccessful.

然而布比谷和达拉谟谷地的环保工作者们的努力不仅没有得到感谢，反而遭到了动物福利团体及其政府和媒体界盟友们几乎无休止的攻击。只要允许富人们打点野味，他们就会投入几百万来挽救最优质的栖息地和物种——批评家们讨厌这个主意。批评家们似乎更喜欢环保事业被全面国有化并了无生气，甚至是遭受失败。

Neither lions nor grouse can control their populations when habitat is limited, other than by starvation and disease. Human hunting, especially if the rich pay and the income is captured by locals and invested in wildlife, is morally, economically and environmentally a better solution. Many of those who shoot and eat grouse this month will do so precisely because of, not despite, the fact that they are keen conservationists.

栖息地是有限的，狮子和松鸡又不能控制自己的数量，数量过剩时只能让它们死于饥饿或疾病。人类的狩猎活动——特别是富人出钱、收入回馈当地社会和野生动物保护的商业性狩猎——无论从道德、经济和环保的角度看都是更好的解决方案。这个月很多狩猎爱好者会去打松鸡吃，恰恰是因为他们是热心的动物保护主义者，这在逻辑上一点也不矛盾。