本集內容

Wildlife in lockdown 野生動物在新冠肺炎疫情封鎖期間的生活

學習要點

有關 “research（研究）” 的詞匯

邊看邊答

What has been used to track animals during lockdown?

文字稿

There's plenty of video evidence on social media that wildlife might benefit from lockdown. And while it's been for tragic, costly reasons, we've pushed the pause button on human activity all over the world.

社交媒體上有大量的視頻證據表明，野生動物可能會從新冠肺炎疫情的封鎖中受益。由于這場悲劇的、代價慘重的疫情，我們按下了全世界人類活動的暫停鍵。

On an increasingly crowded planet, wildlife scientists think that this will have some profound effects. The only way to measure that, though, is with lots of bio-loggers.

在這個日益擁擠的星球上，野生動物學家們認為人類活動的暫停將產生一些深遠的影響。然而，唯一能測量這一影響的方法是使用大量的生物記錄器。

Professor Christian Rutz, University of St Andrews
A bio-logger is a small electronic device that can record, store and in some cases automatically relay information, so that information could be positional information - we can find out through satellite tracking where an animal goes and what it's up to.

克里斯蒂安·魯茲教授     圣安德魯斯大學
“生物記錄器是一種小型電子設備，它可以錄制、儲存，并在某些情況下自動轉發信息，這樣一來，信息就可以帶有位置信息，我們可以通過衛星追蹤發現動物的行蹤和活動。”

This animation shows just how much information those tiny trackers can gather. It shows more than 1500 birds’ movements and migrations logged over a decade.

這個動畫顯示了這些小追蹤器可收集多少信息。動畫中顯示了超過1500只鳥類在過去十年來的移動和遷徙記錄。

Studying human absence is more tricky, though. One famous study in the Chernobyl exclusion zone that I visited with scientists last year, has revealed how nature took over a landscape that was abandoned after the nuclear disaster.

然而，研究人類的缺席卻更難。去年，我和科學家們訪問了切爾諾貝利隔離區，在那里進行的一項著名的研究揭示了大自然接管核災難后被人遺棄的土地的方式。

Now, though, in dozens of ongoing studies, wildlife researchers have their trackers on species from African elephants to migrating cuckoos, and some of that data has been automatically uploaded throughout lockdown.

但現在，在數十項正在進行的研究中，野生動物研究人員為非洲象、遷徙的布谷鳥等物種安裝了追蹤器，其中有一些數據已在疫情封鎖期間被自動上傳。

Professor Christian Rutz, University of St Andrews
And so this really is that an unprecedented opportunity to investigate this relationship between humans and wildlife and we hope that the insights this project will generate will help us to then inform future planning and there are some very specific recommendations that could come out of this.

克里斯蒂安·魯茲教授     圣安德魯斯大學
“所以，這確實是一次前所未有的機會，來研究人類和野生動物之間的這種關系，我們也希望這個項目所產生的深刻見解將幫助我們影響未來的規劃，并從中得出一些非常具體的建議。”

This pause has been at huge human and economic cost, which is why scientists say it's important to maximise what we can learn from lockdown, about how to share the space we have with many other species.

這次人類活動的暫停已造成了巨大的人力和經濟損失，這就是為什么科學家們說，重要的是最大限度地利用我們從疫情封鎖中學到的東西，來與其它物種分享我們共有的空間。

詞匯

profound 深遠的

migrations 遷徙，遷移

unprecedented 前所未有的，史無前例的

insights 深刻的見解

inform 對……產生影響

問題答案

Small electronic devices called bio-loggers have been used.