Wildlife Can Bear with Hunters and Hikers
野生动物可与狩猎者共同生存

播音/撰文 杰森G.戈德曼（Jason G. Goldman）

翻译 bing

审校 吴非

A new study suggests the best predictor of wildlife abundance in public lands is not human activity, but factors like forest connectivity and nearby housing density. Jason G. Goldman reports.
一项新的研究显示，相比于人类活动，其他因素类似于森林连通性（forest connectivity）和附近房屋密度才是预测公共土地上野生动物数量的最好标准。杰森G.戈德曼（Jason G. Goldman）报道。

Public lands in the U.S. are managed with two goals in mind: protecting biodiversity and providing people with recreational opportunities, a chance to connect with nature. But sometimes those two goals are at odds—especially if recreation, activities like hiking or hunting, disrupts wild animals enough to alter their use of those landscapes.
美国的公共土地管理有两大目标：保护生物多样性、为人类提供与自然接触的娱乐机会。但有时，这两个目标会互相冲突——尤其是像徒步或打猎这类的娱乐活动会惊扰到野生动物，使它们不得不换地方生存。

Indeed, several years ago, a study done in California found that hikers had a negative impact on wildlife.
事实上，在几年前，加州的一项研究表明徒步者对野生动物造成消极影响。

"That kind of sounded a bit of an alarm to us as wildlife biologists and as people who like to go hiking ourselves."
“对于野生动物学家和喜欢徒步的人们来说，这项研究可谓是起到了警醒作用。”

Wildlife biologist Roland Kays, of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and N.C. State University.
野生动物学家罗兰·凯斯工作于北卡罗莱纳自然科学博物馆（North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and）和北卡罗莱纳州立大学（N.C. State University）。

"We were pretty worried that if this problem was as bad as it seemed from that study, and was widespread, then there could be a real conflict between outdoor recreation and wildlife conservation."
“我们很担心如果这个问题和研究报告里一样严重怎么办，那样的话人类的户外娱乐活动将和野生动物保护冲突。”

To find out, Kays and his team enlisted the help of more than 350 volunteer citizen scientists, who deployed camera traps at nearly 2,000 sites within 32 protected areas in six different states. Roughly half of the areas allowed hunting and half did not. What they discovered was something of a relief.
为了研究这一问题，凯斯和他的团队在350名公民科学家志愿者的帮助下，在6个州的32个保护区内放置了近2000个相机陷阱。在这些保护区中，一半可以狩猎而另一半不可以。他们的发现结果终于让人松了口气。

"We found relatively minor impacts of hunting and hiking on wildlife."
It's not that human activities didn't impact wildlife at all of course. Heavily hunted species, like white-tailed deer, grey squirrels, and raccoons, were photographed somewhat less often in hunted areas. Coyotes showed up more often in hunted areas. While most species didn't avoid hiking trails, the predators actually preferred them.
“我们发现狩猎和徒步对于野生动物的影响很小。”当然，人类活动对野生动物还是有影响的。被大量捕杀的物种，像白尾鹿，灰松鼠和浣熊，很少出现在捕猎区域，而郊狼的出现变得更加频繁。大部分动物都不避开徒步者，相反，这些捕食者则更喜欢靠近他们。

But they did find something that had a much bigger impact on wildlife: habitat quality. The best predictor of wildlife abundance was not human activity, but factors like forest connectivity, nearby housing density, and the amount of adjacent agriculture. The results were published in the Journal of Applied Ecology. [Roland Kays et al., Does hunting or hiking affect wildlife communities in protected areas?]
调查的确发现了对野生动物生存有很大影响的因素：生活环境的质量。森林连通性、附近房屋密度、相邻农业的数量才是影响野生动物数量的决定性因素。研究结果发表在《应用生态学报》（Applied Ecology）。

And they suggest that outdoor recreation, a 646-billion-dollar industry in the U.S., is currently managed in a sustainable way, but also that protecting the scattered patches of wild habitat that remain in the U.S. is vital—both for wildlife and for people.
美国户外娱乐业的价值高达6460亿，人们正在用可持续发展的方式管理该产业。研究人员提出，保护被分割的小块野生动物栖息地对于野生动物和人类都十分重要。

"Recreation, including hunting and hiking, and wildlife conservation, can coexist in the same place at the same time, and we can go out there and enjoy nature, enjoy the woods, hope to catch a glimpse of wildlife, without worrying about hurting the populations in the process."
—Jason G. Goldman
“狩猎和徒步等娱乐活动和野生动物保护是可以共存的。我们在外出享受自然、漫步森林、观赏野生动物时，无须担心这类行为会削减野生动物的数量。”
——杰森G.戈德曼（Jason G. Goldman）