評論
打印
In all, 25 of the decoys were poached. They told different stories. Some travelled just a few kilometres, with one ending up at a bar 2km away from the nest it was taken from, where its signal abruptly ended. Others went quite a distance. One, for example, was carried 137km inland, to a supermarket loading bay, before transmitting its final signal from a residential property nearby.
被偷的“假蛋”共25枚，它們分別訴說了不同的故事。有的僅被帶離幾公里之外，還有一枚在距離被偷巢穴2公里的一家酒吧內突然銷聲匿跡。其它的則被帶到了較遠的地區，比如其中一枚“假蛋”被帶到了137公里外的內陸，到了一家超市的裝貨間，最后在超市附近的一個小區里發出了最后的信號。
The most curious tale, though, was told by a decoy that ended up in Cariari, a town 43km from the beach where it had been deployed. To their surprise, the researchers were sent photographs of this particular device by members of a local turtle-monitoring project. This group had been contacted by the egg's purchaser, who was happy to volunteer where he had bought it—indicating either that he did not understand that the trade was illegal, or that he didn't care.
其中最離奇的一段故事來自一枚最后被帶到了卡里阿里(Cariari)的“假蛋”，卡里阿里是一處距離被盜巢穴43公里的小鎮。令研究人員驚訝的是，他們從當地的海龜監測項目成員那里收到了該特殊裝置的照片。該海龜蛋買家已經聯系了小組，他很樂意告訴大家自己在哪里買的雞蛋，這表明他不知道這種交易是非法的，或者說他不在乎。
To make sure that they, themselves, were not harming what they were intending to protect, the researchers monitored all of the decoy-laden nests which had survived the attentions of poachers and compared these nests' outputs of hatchlings with those of 44 other surviving nests that had no decoy in them. Both sorts of nest had the same hatching rates, suggesting that adding a decoy did not affect the development of the eggs it was hidden among.
為了確保他們沒有傷及他們自己想要保護的對象，研究人員檢測了所有未引起偷蛋者注意的裝有“假蛋”的巢穴，并將這些巢穴內孵化的小烏龜和其它44個里面沒有“假蛋”的未遭偷盜的巢穴內孵出的小烏龜進行了對比，結果顯示這兩種巢穴內的孵化率是一樣的。這說明把“假蛋”混著放在真蛋里并未影響真蛋的發育。
Given the success of their project, Dr Williams-Guillén and Dr Pheasey propose that the idea should be used more widely for turtles. They also suggest that similar decoys might help protect the eggs of other endangered reptiles—and birds—that are collected and traded illegally.
鑒于項目的成功，金·威廉斯吉倫博士和菲西博士提議將該想法廣泛應用于幫助烏龜。同時他們建議，類似“假蛋”或可用于幫助避免其他面臨威脅的爬行動物——及鳥類——的蛋被收集和非法交易。
譯文由可可原創，僅供學習交流使用，未經許可請勿轉載。
