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Trees began to quake, monkeys shrieked, and birds fled skyward.
樹木開始搖晃，猿聲四起，鳥兒向天空飛去。
Deep in the heart of Odzala-Kokoua National Park, Selah Abong'o froze, convinced she was about to encounter something out of legend: a mokele-mbembe, Congo's mythical dinosaur.
在奧扎拉-科科阿國家公園的深處，塞拉·阿邦奧僵住了，她確信即將遭遇某種來自神話的東西：一頭“魔克拉-姆邊貝”--剛果傳說中的恐龍。
In 2003, the young Congolese conservationist ventured into the dense forest to investigate a devastating Ebola outbreak that had wiped out over 5,000 western lowland gorillas.
2003年，這位年輕的剛果自然環保主義者冒險進入密林，調查一場殺死5000多只西非低地大猩猩的重大埃博拉疫情。
But that day, the epidemic took a backseat to her racing imagination.
然而那一天，在她脫韁的想象力面前，現實的疫情退居次位。
"It was just a really big forest elephant," she laughed.
“結果那只是一頭著實高大的森林象，”她笑道。
"We don't have dinosaurs here, although it's easy to mistake an elephant or hippopotamus for one, which I did. I was a rookie back then."
“我們這兒沒有恐龍，雖然你很容易把大象或河馬錯當成恐龍，我就干過這種事。那時我還是個菜鳥。”
Two decades later, the legend of mokele-mbembe remains alive, whispered in villages and embellished with each new "sighting," and Abong'o says deforestation is the reason why.
那以后又過了二十年，魔克拉-姆邊貝的故事仍未消散，還在村莊里低聲流傳，每一次新的“目擊事件”又讓它更添色彩，阿邦奧說，原因就在于森林砍伐。
The Congo Basin -- Earth's second-largest rainforest and one of its most vital ecosystems -- has lost 23 million hectares of forest since Abong'o's so-called dinosaur encounter, an area comparable to the entire United Kingdom.
剛果盆地是地球第二大雨林和最重要的生態系統之一，自阿邦奧所述的恐龍奇遇記發生后，該地已喪失了2300萬公頃的森林，與整個英國的面積相當。
As human settlements creep further into habitats, encounters between locals and wildlife are becoming more frequent.
當人類居住區進一步向這片棲息地內部蔓延，當地人與野生動物的相遇日漸頻繁。
Mokele-mbembe has shifted from a Western, pseudo-scientific obsession among cryptozoologists and creationist ministers back to its roots as a local African legend shared by those who have long known its story.
魔克拉-姆邊貝由西方神秘動物學家與神創論牧師之間的偽科學迷戀回歸誕生它的土壤，作為非洲本土神話，被知之甚久的人們口口相傳。
"In bigger settlements where habitats are being pushed into and people aren't used to seeing large animals, they're suddenly encountering them all the time," says Laura Vlachova, a Czech conservationist.
“在擠占自然棲息地而形成的更大的人類居住區，人們不常見到大型動物，兩者的相遇總是突如其來，”捷克自然保護主義者勞拉·弗拉喬瓦說。
"It's these people who tell me they've seen mokele-mbembe. I think what it really shows is how folklore is starting to reflect the reality of a shrinking ecosystem."
“正是這些人們告訴我，他們見過魔克拉-姆邊貝。我認為，這里真正展現的是生態系統不斷萎縮的現實怎樣開始在民間傳說里反映出來?！?/p>
