Near the old Silk Road trading town of Tengchong, hard by the Burma border in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan, a green massif parts the sky like the prow of a giant ship. This is the Gaoligong range. Some 300 miles long and topping 16,000 feet, it is an ark of life.
在中国西南部云南省靠近缅甸边境，丝绸之路的贸易古镇腾冲附近，一个绿色的山体像巨轮的船头一样点缀着天空。这是高黎贡山。她长约300英里，高16000英尺，是一艘生命方舟。
About 5,000 species of higher plants carpet the Gaoligong mountains. Almost 700 species of animals, including 154 mammals, 419 birds, 21 amphibians, 56 reptiles, 49 fish, and 1,690 different insects find refuge in the mountain’s steep folds. The Gaoligong represent a chance for solace. They are one of the planet’s last remaining vaults of biodiversity: a glimpse into a teeming Earth that once was.
高黎贡山上覆盖着大约5000种高等植物。近700种动物，包括154种哺乳动物、419种鸟类、21种两栖动物、56种爬行动物、49种鱼类和1690种不同的昆虫在陡峭的山峦中找到了庇护所。高黎贡山代表着一个令人慰藉的事情，她是地球上仅存的生物多样性宝库之一，让我们得以一窥曾经富饶的地球。
According to biologists at the Gaoligong National Nature Reserve, which safeguards 1,500 square miles of habitat at the range’s core, several new plant species are discovered each year inside the park. In our age of emergency, when Homo sapiens are blindly driving one million plants and animals into extinction, such a factoid can inspire hope.
据高黎贡山国家级自然保护区的生物学家所说，保护区保护着1500平方英里的核心栖息地，每年在公园内都会发现一些新的植物物种。在我们这个智人种盲目地将100万动植物推向灭绝的危急时代，这样的一个消息可以带来希望。
Scientists calculate that an explosion of human impacts over the past century, such as industrial farming, logging, overfishing, pollution—and, of course, human-induced climate change—already have depleted much of the world’s oceans and altered up to 75 percent of the planet’s land surface. The planet’s biosphere, our ecological house, is tottering. It is losing its load-bearing beams.
科学家们计算出，过去一个世纪人类影响的爆炸性增长，如工业耕作、伐木、过度捕捞、污染，当然还有人为引起的气候变化，已经耗尽了世界上大部分海洋资源，改变了地球75%的地表。地球的生物圈，我们的生态家园，摇摇欲坠，正在失去承重梁。
At the UN biodiversity conference, China, Europe, and Japan vowed to dramatically expand funding for programs that protect species and natural habitats across the globe. “We declare that putting biodiversity on a path to recovery is a defining challenge of this decade,” the Kunming declaration reads. The delegates promised to implement policies that will begin mending the Earth’s fabric of life “by 2030 at the latest.”
在联合国生物多样性会议上，中国、欧洲和日本承诺大幅增加对全球物种和自然栖息地保护项目的资助。《昆明宣言》写道“我们宣布，让生物多样性走上恢复之路是本十年的决定性挑战”。代表们承诺实施政策，“最迟在2030年”开始修补地球的生命结构。
图文来源 | National Geographic
翻译 | 新译科技AI+人工校对
编辑、排版 | 王仔洋
