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(guó)家公園的邊緣，農(nóng)民們整晚奮力敲著鼓嚇走對(duì)他們來(lái)說(shuō)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(shù)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(gè)非洲，大象和人類(lèi)正處于激烈的沖突之中。人類(lèi)即將贏得勝利。100年前，這片大陸上生存著1000萬(wàn)頭大象。到上世紀(jì)70年代中期，大象的數(shù)量銳減至130萬(wàn)頭。大象的生存范圍也是一樣，象群的棲息地越來(lái)越小，分布的國(guó)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(wàn)頭大象，將近三分之一分布在博茨瓦納這個(gè)相對(duì)安全的天堂。“大象的故事就是一個(gè)不斷后退的故事，”保護(hù)組織非洲野生動(dòng)物基金會(huì)(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(shuō)失去棲息地是大象最大的問(wèn)題，那么情況只會(huì)越來(lái)越糟糕。非洲是全世界人口生育率最高的地區(qū)。未來(lái)30年，非洲的人口將增加一倍，達(dá)到20億人。之后再過(guò)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(ài)好和財(cái)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(lèi)首次把哺乳動(dòng)物推向滅絕境地。《人類(lèi)簡(jiǎn)史》(Sapiens)的作者尤瓦爾•赫拉利(Yuval Noah Harari)把我們稱(chēng)為“生態(tài)系統(tǒng)的連環(huán)殺手”。劍齒虎曾經(jīng)生存了3000萬(wàn)年。它們與人類(lèi)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(yùn)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(lèi)在發(fā)明車(chē)輪以前，已經(jīng)毀滅了一半的大型陸棲動(dòng)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(shuō)人類(lèi)是不可控制的連環(huán)殺手，那么大象的命運(yùn)無(wú)疑已經(jīng)注定。它們將不可避免地走上美洲獅的老路。最樂(lè)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(dòng)物園和全副武裝的保護(hù)區(qū)內(nèi)。或者人類(lèi)能做什么來(lái)使這種世界上最大的陸地哺乳動(dòng)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(shuō)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(qiáng)化《瀕危野生動(dòng)植物種國(guó)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(huì)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(diǎn)。從可卡因到卡拉什尼科夫(Kalashnikov)沖鋒槍?zhuān)薪畹慕Y(jié)果都是可以預(yù)見(jiàn)的：價(jià)格攀升。這無(wú)法阻止偷獵行為，反而會(huì)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(jì)價(jià)值，非洲農(nóng)民也不得不對(duì)付毫無(wú)價(jià)值、四處獵食的象群。除了天生的優(yōu)點(diǎn)之外，大象的價(jià)值只有在當(dāng)?shù)厝藦挠慰蜕砩汐@得好處時(shí)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(gè)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(chǎng)中將會(huì)涌入庫(kù)存象牙，當(dāng)局可以實(shí)施“收獲”象牙的機(jī)制。希望在于這將使得象牙價(jià)格降到低于偷獵成本的水平?？梢苑Q(chēng)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(diǎn)。但是，現(xiàn)在再嘗試可能為時(shí)已晚。貝爾然稱(chēng)，現(xiàn)在人類(lèi)太多，而大象太少，象牙貿(mào)易合法化可能會(huì)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(yàn)性的拍賣(mài)，通過(guò)創(chuàng)造“可交換”象牙而為非法貿(mào)易注入了活力。不過(guò)，如果部分合法化這條路行不通，那么長(zhǎng)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(wèn)題是人類(lèi)和野生動(dòng)物能否并存。非洲地域遼闊，超過(guò)美國(guó)、中國(guó)、印度和西歐的面積總和。但是對(duì)大象來(lái)說(shuō)，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(guó)政府通力合作保護(hù)原野和連接走廊永久地免受開(kāi)發(fā)的威脅，否則關(guān)于象牙貿(mào)易的爭(zhēng)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(jiàn)。