国家地理 牧野分歧(2)（在线收听）

Austin oversees the herd of buffalo that graze below us, and the properties that contain them. He works for the American Prairie Reserve, a conservation organization seeking to create a massive protected area in central Montana and repopulate it with the wildlife of bygone days. Imagine: the plains as they looked in 1805, when explorer Meriwether Lewis climbed to the top of a similar bluff just east of here. "The whole face of the country was covered with herds of Buffaloes, Elk & Antelopes," Lewis wrote in his journal.

奥斯汀负责监管我们脚下这群野牛和它们栖居的土地。他为美国大草原保护组织工作，该组织致力于在蒙大拿州中部建立广袤的保护区，重新引入昔日的野生物种。试想：草原回复1805年的旧观，如探险者梅里韦瑟·刘易斯爬上东边一道与这里差不多的悬崖时所见。“整片大地到处是成群的野牛、马鹿和羚羊。”刘易斯在日记中写道。

And then, in outrageously short order, the animals were gone. Historians estimate there were tens of millions of bison -- the term is interchangeable with buffalo -- when Lewis and fellow explorer William Clark traversed the northern plains; by the mid-1880s, fewer than a thousand remained. Other prairie creatures -- grizzlies, elk, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, wolves, swift foxes, black-footed ferrets -- saw similar declines as settlement spread west. The migrants slaughtered wildlife for cash and sport, built fences and roads that fractured the animals' habitat, trailed livestock that competed for forage and spread disease, and broke the prairie with their plows in order to farm it. Once broken, it takes decades, even centuries, to fix.

随后，在短得过分的时间内，动物们消失了。历史学家估计，刘易斯和一同探险的威廉·克拉克穿越北方大平原时，这里曾有数千万头野牛，而到1880年代中期仅存不足1000头。其他草原生灵--灰熊、马鹿、叉角羚、大角羊、狼、草原狐和黑脚貂也都随着美国人向西部进发而经历了类似的骤减。新移民为了换钱和取乐屠戮野生动物，又修路设篱令它们的栖息地支离破碎。迁来的家畜与野生物种争夺水草，散播疾病。农耕的犁耙撕破草原。一旦破碎，就需要几十年甚至数百年来恢复。