將大象逼入絕境的象牙貿(mào)易

On the fringes of Queen Elizabeth National Park in western Uganda, farmers drum loudly throughout the night to scare off their most destructive enemy: the elephant. In the nearby Bwindi rainforest, small surviving herds of savannah elephants, cut off from their diminishing natural habitat, have adapted to a hidden existence beneath the canopy.

在位于烏干達(dá)西部的伊麗莎白女王國家公園的邊緣，農(nóng)民們整晚奮力敲著鼓嚇走對他們來說最具破壞性的敵人——大象。在附近的布恩迪(Bwindi)雨林，小群幸存的草原象(savannah elephant)遠(yuǎn)離了它們?nèi)找婵s小的自然棲息地，適應(yīng)了躲在樹蔭下的隱蔽生活。

Throughout Africa, elephants and humans are in intense conflict. Humans are winning. A hundred years ago there were 10m elephants roaming the continent. By the mid-1970s that number had collapsed to 1.3m. So had the elephants’ range, with herds restricted to ever-smaller pockets of land in ever-fewer countries.

縱觀整個非洲，大象和人類正處于激烈的沖突之中。人類即將贏得勝利。100年前，這片大陸上生存著1000萬頭大象。到上世紀(jì)70年代中期，大象的數(shù)量銳減至130萬頭。大象的生存范圍也是一樣，象群的棲息地越來越小，分布的國家也日益減少。

Today, there are 400,000 elephants left, roughly a third of them squeezed into one relatively safe haven, Botswana. “The story of the elephant is one of retreat, retreat, retreat, retreat,” says Patrick Bergin, chief executive of the African Wildlife Foundation, a conservation group.

如今，非洲僅存40萬頭大象，將近三分之一分布在博茨瓦納這個相對安全的天堂。“大象的故事就是一個不斷后退的故事，”保護組織非洲野生動物基金會(African Wildlife Foundation)的首席執(zhí)行官帕特里克•貝爾然(Patrick Bergin)表示。

If loss of habitat is the biggest problem, it will only worsen. Africa has the world’s highest human fertility rates. In the next 30 years, the continent’s population will double to 2bn. In another half century it could double again. Then there is the slaughter. In the 20th century, it was white game hunters. In the 21st it is Asian ivory collectors, whose appetite and wealth has encouraged poaching on an industrial scale.

如果說失去棲息地是大象最大的問題，那么情況只會越來越糟糕。非洲是全世界人口生育率最高的地區(qū)。未來30年，非洲的人口將增加一倍，達(dá)到20億人。之后再過50年，非洲人口可能再次翻番。此外，這里還存在屠殺。在20世紀(jì)，獵殺大象的是熱衷狩獵游戲的白人。到了21世紀(jì)，是亞洲的象牙收藏者，他們的品味愛好和財富催生了盜獵產(chǎn)業(yè)。

It is hardly the first time humans have driven mammals towards extinction. Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens, calls us “ecological serial killers”. The sabre-tooth tiger had existed for 30m years. Within 2,000 years of its first contact with humans, it had vanished forever. A similar fate befell a range of animals from mammoths and mastodons, a distant relation of the elephant, to giant sloths. Even before humans had invented the wheel, they had destroyed half of all big terrestrial animals.

這不是人類首次把哺乳動物推向滅絕境地。《人類簡史》(Sapiens)的作者尤瓦爾•赫拉利(Yuval Noah Harari)把我們稱為“生態(tài)系統(tǒng)的連環(huán)殺手”。劍齒虎曾經(jīng)生存了3000萬年。它們與人類首次接觸后的2000年內(nèi)，劍齒虎永遠(yuǎn)地消失了。同樣的命運降臨在一系列物種身上，從猛犸象和乳齒象(大象的遠(yuǎn)親)到大地懶。人類在發(fā)明車輪以前，已經(jīng)毀滅了一半的大型陸棲動物。

If humans are uncontrollable serial killers, then surely the elephants’ fate is sealed. Inevitably they will go the way of the American lion. At best, they will be driven to near-extinction, preserved in a few city zoos and armed-to-the teeth sanctuaries. Or can anything be done to preserve the world’s largest land mammal in anything like its present numbers? There are two strategies to arrest the catastrophe. Unfortunately, they pull in opposite directions.

如果說人類是不可控制的連環(huán)殺手，那么大象的命運無疑已經(jīng)注定。它們將不可避免地走上美洲獅的老路。最樂觀的情況是，它們被逼到近乎滅絕的地步，保留在一些城市動物園和全副武裝的保護區(qū)內(nèi)?；蛘呷祟惸茏鍪裁磥硎惯@種世界上最大的陸地哺乳動物維持在現(xiàn)有數(shù)量?有兩種策略可以阻止大象滅絕。遺憾的是，這兩種策略可以說是背向而馳。

One is to intensify a 1990 ban on the ivory trade imposed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which is meeting in South Africa this week. In addition to outlawing the sale of poached ivory, an extended ban would prohibit trade in all ivory products, including antiques. The trade in legal ivory is open to abuse, with new ivory easily passed off as old. Environmentalists say that if China and other big Asian ivory buyers, including Vietnam and Malaysia, support a ban, the market dynamic can shift.

一種策略是強化《瀕危野生動植物種國際貿(mào)易公約》(CITES)下1990年頒布的象牙貿(mào)易禁令。最近一次CITES締約方大會剛剛在南非舉行。

There are obvious flaws in this strategy. Ban anything, from cocaine to Kalashnikovs, and the result is gruesomely predictable: its price will rise. That would energise poaching, not stop it. Even if, by some miracle, the policy worked and ivory lost its monetary value, African farmers would be left with marauding herds of worthless mammals. Other than their intrinsic beauty, they would be valuable only insofar as local people could capture some of the resulting tourist dollars.

該策略存在明顯的缺點。從可卡因到卡拉什尼科夫(Kalashnikov)沖鋒槍，所有禁令的結(jié)果都是可以預(yù)見的：價格攀升。這無法阻止偷獵行為，反而會刺激偷獵。即使出現(xiàn)奇跡，政策起到作用、象牙失去了經(jīng)濟價值，非洲農(nóng)民也不得不對付毫無價值、四處獵食的象群。除了天生的優(yōu)點之外，大象的價值只有在當(dāng)?shù)厝藦挠慰蜕砩汐@得好處時才能體現(xiàn)。

The opposite approach would be to legalise the trade entirely. Like debasing a currency, the idea would be to force an “elephant devaluation”. Under this scenario, the market would be flooded with existing stockpiles and arrangements put in place to “harvest” tusks. The hope would be to drive the price below that at which it is worth the risk and cost of poaching. Call it fiat ivory.

另一個截然相反的辦法是讓象牙貿(mào)易完全合法化。和貨幣貶值一樣，該策略是迫使“大象貶值”。在這種情況下，市場中將會涌入庫存象牙，當(dāng)局可以實施“收獲”象牙的機制。希望在于這將使得象牙價格降到低于偷獵成本的水平?？梢苑Q之為合法象牙。

A “sustainable harvesting” approach has merit. But it may be too late to try. Mr Bergin says there are too many humans and too few animals. Legalisation of ivory would be a death knell, he says.

“可持續(xù)收獲”方法有其優(yōu)點。但是，現(xiàn)在再嘗試可能為時已晚。貝爾然稱，現(xiàn)在人類太多，而大象太少，象牙貿(mào)易合法化可能會敲響大象滅絕的喪鐘。

Two experimental auctions, in 1997 and 2008, breathed life into the illegal trade by creating “fungible” ivory. Yet if partial legalisation failed, so has the 25-year prohibition. Once again, elephant populations are in alarming decline.

1997年和2008年兩次試驗性的拍賣，通過創(chuàng)造“可交換”象牙而為非法貿(mào)易注入了活力。不過，如果部分合法化這條路行不通，那么長達(dá)25年的禁令也一樣。大象數(shù)量再次急劇減少。

The bigger question still is whether humans and wild animals can live side by side. Africa is huge. It could accommodate the US, China, India and western Europe. But from the elephants’ perspective, it is a shrinking universe.

但是更大的問題是人類和野生動物能否并存。非洲地域遼闊，超過美國、中國、印度和西歐的面積總和。但是對大象來說，世界正在縮小。

Unless African governments, working in conjunction, can protect areas of wilderness and connecting corridors indefinitely from development, the debate on ivory trading will be a sideshow. That is the mastodon in the room.

除非非洲各國政府通力合作保護原野和連接走廊永久地免受開發(fā)的威脅，否則關(guān)于象牙貿(mào)易的爭論只能成為余興談資。這就像房間里的乳齒象，豈能視而不見。