美国国家公共电台 NPR 'An Eerie Silence' Where Federal Land Agency Workers Are Furloughed

 

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

We've been hearing a lot about overflowing¹ trash bins² and unsafe conditions at national parks due to the partial government shutdown. But other critical works on public lands has also stopped. NPR's Kirk Siegler reports.

KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE³: Here's the view of the shutdown from the doorstep of the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains and the town of Mammoth⁴ Lakes, Calif.

JOHN WENTWORTH: It's an eerie⁵ silence.

SIEGLER: John Wentworth is on the town council.

WENTWORTH: The folks that are responsible for, you know, stewarding, maintaining and watching out for the - one of the great legacies⁶ of the United States, our federal public lands, are absent. They're gone.

SIEGLER: Mammoth is completely surrounded and largely dependent on federal public lands, including its ski resort, which operates on a forest service lease. Wentworth says the abrupt⁷ shutdown coincided with the busy holidays. Suddenly, there was no one staffing visitor centers or popular national forest trailheads in the area for snowshoeing or snowmobiling and no one to enforce the rules or just manage the land - millions of acres of it across the West.

WENTWORTH: It's kind of scary. We don't know what to tell our visitors. We don't know what to tell our guests. We don't know how to be good hosts and stewards⁸ of these federal public lands because the federal presence is not there.

SIEGLER: This is a familiar anxiety in communities that promote themselves as gateways⁹ to massive amounts of U.S. public land, land that's open to everyone and everything from outdoor recreation to natural resource extraction. When your landlord is suddenly unreachable, almost everything is thrown into limbo¹⁰ - about half of California's U.S. public land. Next door in Nevada, it's more like 80 percent.

JAINA MOAN: When they're not there and the longer it goes on, you know, I just start to worry that our lands aren't getting taken care of the way they should be.

SIEGLER: Jaina Moan is with the Nevada chapter of The Nature Conservancy.

MOAN: Sure, there's a lot of citizens out there that will pick up trash. But the larger, landscape scale planning issues, they're not getting addressed.

SIEGLER: In Nevada, this means private-public landscape programs to improve range land for ranchers, and across the West, partnerships¹¹ on large wildfire mitigation and timber projects. All of these are on hold. Moan's group can still do some work, but they can't access certain closed lands or the expertise¹² of federal scientists who work on them. And big, collaborative meetings are postponed¹³.

MOAN: Like most of America, we hope that Congress and the president can resolve this soon because we need those government partnerships to work.

SIEGLER: These partnerships have become critical as funding for federal land agencies has dropped steadily¹⁴. In Mammoth Lakes, John Wentworth says local governments have been trying to plan around this new reality.

WENTWORTH: So that if these spasms¹⁵ that come out of Washington due to unprecedented¹⁶, existential, partisan¹⁷ craziness, we will have partnerships and working relationships in place to be able to mitigate¹⁸ these effects.

SIEGLER: This coming summer, his town hopes to help the Forest Service remove trash from trailheads and better staff them. But this shutdown happened so quick, Wentworth says there was no time for even short-term contingency¹⁹ plans. Kirk Siegler, NPR News.

1 overflowing   

n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• The stands were overflowing with farm and sideline products. 集市上农副产品非常丰富。
• The milk is overflowing. 牛奶溢出来了。

2 bins   

n.大储藏箱( bin的名词复数 )；宽口箱（如面包箱，垃圾箱等）v.扔掉，丢弃( bin的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Garbage from all sources was deposited in bins on trolleys. 来自各方的垃圾是装在手推车上的垃圾箱里的。 来自辞典例句
• Would you be pleased at the prospect of its being on sale in dump bins? 对于它将被陈列在倾销箱中抛售这件事，你能欣然接受吗？ 来自辞典例句

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 mammoth   

n.长毛象；adj.长毛象似的，巨大的

参考例句：

• You can only undertake mammoth changes if the finances are there.资金到位的情况下方可进行重大变革。
• Building the new railroad will be a mammoth job.修建那条新铁路将是一项巨大工程。

5 eerie   

adj.怪诞的；奇异的；可怕的；胆怯的

参考例句：

• It's eerie to walk through a dark wood at night.夜晚在漆黑的森林中行走很是恐怖。
• I walked down the eerie dark path.我走在那条漆黑恐怖的小路上。

6 legacies   

n.遗产( legacy的名词复数 )；遗留之物；遗留问题；后遗症

参考例句：

• Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind. 书是伟大的天才留给人类的精神财富。 来自辞典例句
• General legacies are subject to the same principles as demonstrative legacies. 一般的遗赠要与指定数目的遗赠遵循同样的原则。 来自辞典例句

7 abrupt   

adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的

参考例句：

• The river takes an abrupt bend to the west.这河突然向西转弯。
• His abrupt reply hurt our feelings.他粗鲁的回答伤了我们的感情。

8 stewards   

（轮船、飞机等的）乘务员( steward的名词复数 )； （俱乐部、旅馆、工会等的）管理员； （大型活动的）组织者； （私人家中的）管家

参考例句：

• The stewards all wore armbands. 乘务员都戴了臂章。
• The stewards will inspect the course to see if racing is possible. 那些干事将检视赛马场看是否适宜比赛。

9 gateways   

n.网关( gateway的名词复数 )；门径；方法；大门口

参考例句：

• Police bullets raked the gateways car. 警察的子弹对着门口的汽车扫射。 来自辞典例句
• No Internet gateways are needed for the programs operation. 该软件的操作不需要互联网网关的支持。 来自互联网

10 limbo   

n.地狱的边缘；监狱

参考例句：

• His life seemed stuck in limbo and he could not go forward and he could not go back.他的生活好像陷入了不知所措的境地，进退两难。
• I didn't know whether my family was alive or dead.I felt as if I was in limbo.我不知道家人是生是死，感觉自己茫然无措。

11 partnerships   

n.伙伴关系( partnership的名词复数 )；合伙人身份；合作关系

参考例句：

• Partnerships suffer another major disadvantage: decision-making is shared. 合伙企业的另一主要缺点是决定要由大家来作。 来自英汉非文学 - 政府文件
• It involved selling off limited partnerships. 它涉及到售出有限的合伙权。 来自辞典例句

12 expertise   

n.专门知识(或技能等)，专长

参考例句：

• We were amazed at his expertise on the ski slopes.他斜坡滑雪的技能使我们赞叹不已。
• You really have the technical expertise in a new breakthrough.让你真正在专业技术上有一个全新的突破。

13 postponed   

vt.& vi.延期，缓办，（使）延迟vt.把…放在次要地位；[语]把…放在后面（或句尾）vi.（疟疾等）延缓发作（或复发）

参考例句：

• The trial was postponed indefinitely. 审讯无限期延迟。
• The game has already been postponed three times. 这场比赛已经三度延期了。

14 steadily   

adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地

参考例句：

• The scope of man's use of natural resources will steadily grow.人类利用自然资源的广度将日益扩大。
• Our educational reform was steadily led onto the correct path.我们的教学改革慢慢上轨道了。

15 spasms   

n.痉挛( spasm的名词复数 )；抽搐；（能量、行为等的）突发；发作

参考例句：

• After the patient received acupuncture treatment,his spasms eased off somewhat. 病人接受针刺治疗后，痉挛稍微减轻了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The smile died, squeezed out by spasms of anticipation and anxiety. 一阵阵预测和焦虑把她脸上的微笑挤掉了。 来自辞典例句

16 unprecedented   

adj.无前例的，新奇的

参考例句：

• The air crash caused an unprecedented number of deaths.这次空难的死亡人数是空前的。
• A flood of this sort is really unprecedented.这样大的洪水真是十年九不遇。

17 partisan   

adj.党派性的；游击队的；n.游击队员；党徒

参考例句：

• In their anger they forget all the partisan quarrels.愤怒之中，他们忘掉一切党派之争。
• The numerous newly created partisan detachments began working slowly towards that region.许多新建的游击队都开始慢慢地向那里移动。

18 mitigate   

vt.（使）减轻，（使）缓和

参考例句：

• The government is trying to mitigate the effects of inflation.政府正试图缓和通货膨胀的影响。
• Governments should endeavour to mitigate distress.政府应努力缓解贫困问题。

19 contingency   

n.意外事件，可能性

参考例句：

• We should be prepared for any contingency.我们应该对任何应急情况有所准备。
• A fire in our warehouse was a contingency that we had not expected.库房的一场大火是我们始料未及的。