原文標題：
Conserving elephants
Know your boundaries
Malaysia’s elephants spend more time outside protected areas than in them
保護大象
了解界限
馬來西亞大象在保護區(qū)外的時間比在保護區(qū)內的時間長

The grub is better there
那里的食物更好

[Paragraph 1]
WAY BACK in 1999, Iain Douglas-Hamilton, a doyen of research into African elephants, made an intriguing discovery.
早在1999年，一位研究非洲象的學者伊恩·道格拉斯·漢密爾頓就有一個有趣的發(fā)現(xiàn)。

Using the Global Positioning System (GPS) to track them—a first—he found that they knew exactly where the boundaries of protected areas were.
用全球定位系統(tǒng)（GPS）跟蹤大象——他發(fā)現(xiàn)非洲大象知道保護區(qū)的邊界在哪里。

They ranged freely within these areas, but when crossing between them, through apparently similar but unprotected habitat, they did so at night and at what was (for an elephant) a gallop.
它們在這些區(qū)域內自由活動，但當它們穿過明顯相似但未受保護的棲息地時，它們會在夜間（對大象來說）“疾馳”而過。

[Paragraph 2]
At first sight, it looks as though Asian elephants did not get the memo. They seem to travel outside protected areas with gay abandon.
初看之下，似乎亞洲象不知道邊界在哪。他們很隨意地走出保護區(qū)。

But a study by Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz of Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, in Yunnan province, China, and Benoit Goossens of Danau Girang Field Centre, in Sabah, Malaysia, suggests that this abandon is not quite as gay as it seems.
但是，中國云南省西雙版納熱帶植物園的阿希姆薩·坎波斯-阿塞茲和馬來西亞沙巴市達瑙-吉朗野外中心的貝努瓦·古森共同的研究表明，這種隨意并不像看上去那么快樂。

[Paragraph 3]
Dr Campos-Arceiz, Dr Goossens and their colleagues synthesised the work of three research groups who were following in Dr Douglas-Hamilton’s footsteps by tracking their quarry with GPS.
坎波斯-阿塞茲博士、古森博士和他們的同事們綜合了三個研究小組的工作，這些研究小組沿用了道格拉斯·漢密爾頓博士的方法，即通過GPS追蹤目標。

Collectively, these groups studied, over the course of more than a decade, 102 elephants in both west and east Malaysia. Altogether, they recorded more than 600,000 GPS locations.
在研究這個課題的十多年里，這些小組共同研究了馬來西亞西部和東部的102頭大象。他們總共記錄了60多萬個GPS位置。

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As they report in the Journal of Applied Ecology, they found that these elephants, though concentrated in Malaysia’s protected areas, spent more than half of their time outside them.
正如他們在《應用生態(tài)學報》上所報道的那樣，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)，這些大象雖然集中在馬來西亞的保護區(qū)，但卻有一半以上的時間都在保護區(qū)外。

The reason, which did not pertain to Dr Douglas-Hamilton’s study, was that habitats inside and outside those areas differed.
這與道格拉斯·漢密爾頓博士的研究無關，因為這些保護區(qū)域內外的棲息地不同。

In Malaysia, protection tends to be afforded to primary forests.
在馬來西亞，原始森林往往受到保護。

Elephants prefer more disturbed areas, with palms and saplings to snack on, and also grasses, among them bamboo.
大象更喜歡受干擾的地區(qū)，因為那里有棕櫚樹和樹苗可以吃，還有草，其中包括竹子。

Mature forest trees offer fewer opportunities to feed.
成熟森林里的大樹不適合作大象的食物。

[Paragraph 5]
Which is not to say that the protected areas offered no protection.
這并不是說保護區(qū)沒有起到保護作用。

Most forays went less than 3km from those areas. Home ranges, by contrast, were measured in hundreds, or thousands, of square kilometres.
大多數大象涉足的范圍不到3公里。而相比一般情況下，動物的范圍是以數百或數千平方公里為單位。

The upshot is that Dr Campos-Arceiz and Dr Goossens suggest a change in conservation policy to recognise the value of these areas of secondary growth, which are often neglected because of an understandable desire to preserve what primary forest is left.
結果是，坎波斯-阿塞茲博士和古森博士建議改變保護政策，以認識到這些次生林的重要性。人們希望保護剩余的原始森林而忽略了次生林，這是可以理解的。

（恭喜讀完，本篇英語詞匯量362左右）
原文出自：2022年10月22日《TE》Science & technology版塊。
精讀筆記來源于：自由英語之路
本文翻譯整理: Irene本文編輯校對: Irene
僅供個人英語學習交流使用。

【補充資料】（來自于網絡）
次生林即植物群落從次生裸地發(fā)生，通過一系列次生演替階段所形成的森林。亦即森林通過采伐或其他自然因素破壞后，自然恢復的森林，因而有時又稱天然次生林。次生林是原始林經過干擾后在次生裸地上形成的森林，可以理解為是原始森林生態(tài)系統(tǒng)的一種退化，生態(tài)系統(tǒng)的基本結構和固有功能遭破壞或喪失，生物多樣性下降，穩(wěn)定性和抗逆能力減弱，系統(tǒng)生產力降低。

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【重點句子】（3?個）
At first sight, it looks as though Asian elephants did not get the memo. They seem to travel outside protected areas with gay abandon.
初看之下，似乎亞洲象不知道邊界在哪。他們很隨意地走出保護區(qū)。

They found that these elephants, though concentrated in Malaysia’s protected areas, spent more than half of their time outside them.
他們發(fā)現(xiàn)，這些大象雖然集中在馬來西亞的保護區(qū)，但卻有一半以上的時間都在保護區(qū)外。

Elephants prefer more disturbed areas, with palms and saplings to snack on, and also grasses, among them bamboo.
大象更喜歡受干擾的地區(qū)，因為那里有棕櫚樹和樹苗可以吃，還有草，其中包括竹子。