So, human relationships with animals can be pretty weird. We put them in categories based on how we see them. So there's pets and they're, like, members of the family. And then there's farm animals and they're often very similar to pets in terms of their cognitive abilities and their emotional abilities. But of course, we eat them. And then there's wild animals. And I've been wondering what wild animals even are anymore. Like, you can get a degree in wildlife management, but if you're managing them, are they really wild?
人类和动物的关系可能很奇怪 我们被分类动物,根据怎么看得它们。 所以有宠物,它们是家庭成员的宠物。 和农场动物 它们在认知能力上和宠物相近 情绪智力也没有大区别 但是,我们吃农场动物。 也有野生动物。 而我一直在思考,究竟还有什么是“野生动物”。 比如说,人们可以取得野生动物管理学位, 但如果你管理它们,那还算是野生吗?
I started thinking about this in the context of wolf reintroduction. So when wolves were first brought back to the American West in the 1990s, they were pretty heavily managed and they still are today. A lot of them wear collars, they have GPS trackers, they have their DNA on file, they have names and numbers. And if they get a taste for livestock, then we haze them with rubber bullets or air horns, or sometimes those, like, floaty guys that you see in used-car lots. And of course, if they don't get the message, they can be shot. So how wild are they really if they're being this carefully managed? It's occurred to me that a ground squirrel or a city robin is in some ways wilder than these wolves, because although they might live in a city, no one is managing their day-to-day life.
我思考这个问题的起点是狼群恢复的事件。 1990年当人们第一次将狼群带进美国西部时, 它们受到了严格管控,直至今日。 狼需要带上项圈, 身上有GPS跟踪器, 它们有记载着各自DNA的文件,有名字,有编号。 如果它们意图捕食活物, 人们就会用橡皮子弹或汽笛迷惑狼, 有时候还用那些你会在二手车市场见到的气模人。 自然地,如果它们没明白含义,就会遭到射击。 那它们到底有多“野生” 既然都已经管理到了这么细致的程度? 我认为一只花栗鼠或城市里的知更鸟 某种程度上都比这些狼野生 尽管可能住在城市里 但是没人在操纵它们一天天的生活
But of course, they are living in a human world. A world that's been shaped by massive influences like conversion of land to agriculture, extinctions, domestications, movement of species across continent. And we've rerouted rivers. And of course, there's climate change, which means that every animal, no matter how distant from a human settlement, has some influence of the human world. So if every animal lives in a human world, does that mean that we somehow owe them more than we used to? I think it does.
但确实,它们住在人类世界中 这是一个被大量事物影响的世界 例如农业用地的转化 物种灭绝、驯化、跨大洲的迁徙 我们重新规划河道 气候变化的影响也意味着,所有动物, 无论栖息地离人类聚居地多远 都受到了人类世界的一定影响 如果所有动物都居住在受人类影响的世界中 是否也意味着我们亏欠它们的远超以往? 我觉得是这样。
So take polar bears, for instance. Some populations of polar bears are struggling to live on the sea ice in the summer. There's just not enough sea ice for them to go hunting for seals, which is what they'd normally eat. So I think we should consider feeding them for at least part of the year. Now, there'd be a lot of logistical challenges with this we'd have to work out. And certainly we would want to make sure that the Inuit who have lived with these bears and hunted them for millennia would be on board with any plan. There might be other ethical obligations that supersede our obligation to care for the bears, like, we'd have to think pretty hard about where we get the meat that we feed them, or if it'd be possible to feed them some kind of plant-based polar bear chow that would meet all their requirements. So these are not easy questions, but I think we should be thinking about them.
举个例子,北极熊 夏天时,有些北极熊艰难地 在海冰上存活, 没有足够的海冰让它们能够捕食海豹 那是它们通常的食物。 因此我认为我们应该考虑投喂它们,至少一年中的某段时期 如今,相关的物流问题 我们需要解决 当然,我们需要确认 与这些北极熊们共存 且捕猎它们近千年的因纽特人 也参与所有计划的制定 可能还有其他道德责任 在我们担起责任照顾熊类时 需要被考虑 例如,我们需要认真考虑如何获取肉类 来投喂北极熊们 或者考虑是否能够喂它们一些植物性食物 满足它们的需求 这些问题都不简单 但我认为应该思考
On the other hand, if we really want to see animals happy, we need to start asking what that full happiness looks like, what does it mean for an animal to really flourish? So this would go beyond just being well-fed and healthy and it might include something like freedom or at least the ability to make your own choices day-to-day. A few years back in Washington State, there was this dog that ran away from his home and joined up with two wolves and they formed a little pack. And wildlife managers were very nervous about this because they didn't want the dog impregnating either of the wolves because any puppies would be hybrids. They would be neither domestic nor wild. They wouldn't fit into either category. Regulating them or figuring out what to do with them would be a nightmare. So they tracked the pack down and when they found that one of the wolves was indeed pregnant by the dog, they ended her pregnancy. So in that case, the sort of purity of the wolf, or the genetic wildness of the wolf, was deemed to be more important than its actual autonomy.
另一方面,如果我们真的希望动物幸福 我们需要开始思考,真正的幸福应该是什么 对于一个动物来说繁荣是什么 这就远超出有食物、不生病的范畴了 还将包括其他东西,如自由 或至少能够做出每天的选择 几年前在华盛顿州 有只狗跑出了它的家 加入了两只狼 组成了一个小团体 野生动物管理者对此非常紧张 因为他们不希望狗和狼繁殖 因为生下来的小狗会是杂交 不是家养动物,也不是野生动物 它们将不属于任何类型 管控或者弄清怎么对待杂交小狗将是一场噩梦 于是他们一直跟踪兽群 当他们发现有只狼确实有了狗的后代 他们终止了狼的怀孕 在这个事例中,狼种族的纯粹性 或是狼的纯粹野性 都比它能自己决定生活更重要
I'd like to say that there's some sort of algorithm that I could give you that would always help you decide what to do in any given case with wild animals. But I bet you saw this coming when I tell you that there aren't really any easy answers to this. The tricky thing is that sometimes we're having to compare things that are not in the same currency, so to speak, right? So what I really struggle with are situations where biodiversity trades off against animal welfare or the well-being of individual animals. So there's actually a lot more of these conundrums than you might think. Like in New Zealand, for example, tons of iconic animals like the Kiwi are threatened by introduced predators, including stoats, which are, like, this cute furry little weasel. So do you kill the introduced predators to save the endangered species?
我希望能说,存在着某种算法 可以帮助你 决定在任意给定情况下如何行动 只要涉及野生动物 但我想你应该知道了 我会说并没有所谓的简单答案 最麻烦的是,有时我们不得不比较一些东西 它们的比较标准却不同。 所以我真正遇到困难的 是生物多样性和动物福利相矛盾的情况 或是生物多样性和个体动物生活冲突的情况 实际上有更多你也能想到的相关问题 举个例子,在新西兰 许多标志性动物如几维鸟的生存,正受到人为外来物种的威胁 例如白鼬,这种毛绒绒的像黄鼠狼的小可爱 是否要猎杀外来物种,拯救濒危动物?
In questions like these, I don't think there really are "right" answers. I think we just have to do the best when we're comparing apples and oranges, a species versus the welfare of many individuals. All we can do is our best, working together and trying to act with humility.
在这种问题面前 我不认为有真正的正确答案 我觉得,面对这种比较苹果和橘子的问题 比较一个物种和其他很多个体生物的福祉的问题 我们只能做到最好 共同努力
We've really changed the world and all of the animals that live in it now are basically living in our world. I think this gives us new responsibilities. In this world we've created, it's time for us to take those responsibilities to other species seriously.
我们已经改变了世界 而现在在这个世界上的动物,都可以说住在我们的世界里 我们有了新的责任 在我们所创造的世界上 是时候承担责任 承担对其他物种的责任了
Thanks so much.
非常感谢
David Biello: That was excellent. Thank you. And I know it was a short talk, so I want you to expand upon it a little bit. You talked about our ethical obligations to these wild animals. What do you think those specifically are, after the journey of writing this book?
大卫: 非常杰出的演说 非常感谢 既然这是一次简短讨论 我希望能再延伸一点 你说到我们对野生动物具有道义上的责任 你认为具体是什么 在你写完这本书后?
Emma Marris: Well, I do think that because we have created this world, that because there's so much human influence, that we do bear some kind of collective responsibility, especially in situations where we can clearly see that animals are suffering or not doing well because of our influence. So there's a sort of a very intuitive ethical relationship there. If you actually knock someone over in a crowd, you feel like you have the responsibility to pick them back up. So I think there's a kind of a parallel there. But I also think that if we have obligations to wild animals that go beyond just letting nature take its course, then I think we have to learn more about them to figure out how to best serve them. And I think that includes figuring out what really makes them flourish. And I do think that that kind of flourishing -- And this is the word that you see in discussions about Aristotle, right, like, the flourishing of a human -- But to think about a flourishing of an animal is a little more complicated. But I do think that for many animals, especially animals that are close to us on the taxonomic tree of life, like chimpanzees and other large mammals, that being able to make your own choices is part of that flourishing. So that means we want to balance our intervention with our respect for their autonomy. And I think that's really tricky sometimes.
爱玛:是的,我确实认为因为我们创作了这个世界 带来了很多人类的影响 所以我们是有某种集体责任 特别是当我们能明显观察到野生动物正在遭难 或因为人类影响生活不好 因此这里的道德关系是很直观的 如果你在人群中撞倒了某一个人 你会觉得有责任将他扶起来 我认为这是相似的 但我也认为,如果我们对野生动物负有责任 情况又不在自然可以调节的程度时 那么我们要学习更多关于野生动物的东西 知道如何最好地帮助它们 我认为这包括弄懂怎样让它们真正繁荣 而我也确实认为,这种繁荣—— 是的,就是你在亚里士多德讨论中见到的那个词 ——和人的繁荣一样 而思考动物的繁荣更复杂一点 但我确实认为,对大多数动物来说 特别是与人类在分类学上相近的动物 例如黑猩猩和其他大型动物 可以自己做出决定就是繁荣的一部分 这意味着我们需要平衡现在的干预手段 尊重动物的自主权利 有时候我也觉得这很困难
DB: So let's turn to some audience questions. Starting with Kim, who I feel may have read your recent op-ed in "The New York Times." "How do you feel about zoos or sanctuaries for wild animals?" Is there a better way to protect them? And is there a better way to spend time with animals, which is what zoos offer, and have them accessible to humans, but also be sure that the animals' kind of flourishing comes first?
大卫:让我们看一下观众的提问 首先是金 我想这位有读到过本书在纽约时报上的广告 “你对野生动物的动物园和保护区有什么看法? 有没有更好的保护方式? 是否有更好的方式,可以让人和动物们相处 例如动物园,提供了人们与动物接触的机会, 但同时又如何能先保证动物繁荣?”
EM: Right. Thanks, Kim. I did write a piece about this recently, and the piece is sort of drawn from the book. So if you enjoyed that piece, there's more goodness in the book. But I do think -- After researching zoos and the sort of happiness level of animals in zoos, I came to realize that there's a sort of a problem with the business model of zoos, which is that the very animals that are most likely to get people in the door, are the ones that do the worst in captivity. So there's a real problem there, which is that if zoos got rid of all of the animals that tend to show kind of behaviors that show they're unhappy, like pacing or rocking or repetitive behaviors or other kinds of behavioral problems, they'd be left with animals that aren't as much of a draw. So I think that puts them in an awkward position. I do think that zoos should stop breeding animals that aren't a part of a sort of a legitimate conservation breeding program that has a real chance of going back out into the wild someday. So I think it's a lot easier to ethically justify breeding animals in captivity if they or their grandchildren are someday going to taste freedom again. But if you're just breeding tigers and elephants over and over again just for display in captivity, I don't think that's great. Every time I see the birth announcement of some new adorable gorilla baby, my heart breaks a little bit because I know this gorilla baby is never getting out. That's not like, you know, this gorilla is going to spend its formative years at the such-and-such zoo and then it's going to return to the jungle. That's not happening. Sanctuaries are a different proposition. So sanctuaries don't breed their animals. They just take care of animals that can't return to the wild for one reason or another. So I think that they're at a much better place ethically.
爱玛:好的。谢谢金 我最近确实写过相关文章 也是基于本书的 如果你赞同那篇文章,这本书里有更多有益的东西 但我确实认为—— 在研究过动物园和其中动物的幸福程度后 我意识到商业模式的动物园中存在一种问题 越是那种 能吸引人们的动物 生存能力越不佳 因此这里有一个现实问题 如果动物园放弃所有 会显示出不快乐的行为的动物 例如乱走、摇晃、重复一些动作 或者其他行为问题 动物园就会将它们也视为没有那么多吸引力 我觉得这令它们的处境很艰难 我认为动物园应该停止繁育那种 不属于官方保护繁育项目中的动物 有可能之后回归野外的那种 因此我认为从道德层面考虑关在笼子里的动物要更容易 如果他们或他们的后代有一天能够获得自由 但如果只是一次又一次地繁育老虎、大象 只是为了在笼子里展示 我认为这不合适 每当我看到可爱猩猩宝宝出生的新闻 我就又心碎一点 因为我知道这只大猩猩宝宝再也无法脱身 这不像,比如 她会在各种动物园度过发展期 再回到丛林中 不会是这样的 保护区不太一样 它不繁育动物 只照料无法回归野外的动物 原因可能不同 而我认为它们所在的地方从道德角度还是更好
Oh, but let me address the question of how you then see animals, right, if we remove these breeding populations of fun animals from zoos, how do you have that experience? Well, first of all, there is an amazing ability for us to virtually interact with animals through nature documentaries, which are better than ever. I actually wrote about them recently, too, but their filming can get you closer to a wild animal than you would ever be wise to do in the real world. But I also think that we need to sort of reshift our thinking a little bit around the animals that exist in our own ecosystems, even in our city ecosystems, right? You can see a surprising diversity of bird life, insect life in some case, and mammal life inside even very busy cities. And realizing that those animals are really awesome, too, and just because they aren't elephants, we've forgotten to take pleasure in encountering them. I think a perspective shift there can be really helpful.
啊,但让我先回答你的问题,以后如何能看到动物 如果动物园不再饲养这些有趣的动物 要怎么和动物打交道 首先,我们有一种奇妙的能力 能通过自然纪录片和从视觉上了解动物 这种形式比以往都要好 我最近也写了相关内容 他们的摄影能让你离野生动物更近 比你在现实世界中最明智的观察手段更近 但我也认为我们需要改变一点思想 一些关于在我们的生态系统中生存的动物们的思想 甚至是在我们城市生态系统中的动物们,对吧? 你可以在一些情况下观察到令人吃惊的鸟类、昆虫类 和哺乳类生物多样性,即使是非常繁华的城市中 并意识到这些动物们非常厉害 也正因为它们不是大象 我们没有将见到它们作为一种乐趣 而这种视角转换会很有帮助
DB: Now, Catherine and Gordon want us to take this to the sea. How does this all apply to sea creatures, which are obviously in a far different position than the land animals? But there are more of them, right?
大卫:接下来,凯特林和高豋想和我们一起思考 海洋的问题 这些要如何适用于海洋生物 它们很明显和陆地生物情况不同 但海洋生物数量更多,不是吗?
EM: Yes, great question. First of all, I think that many of my critiques of zoos apply to aquaria as well. And, you know, certainly there has been a real public discussion about the captivity of whales and other marine mammals. So I think the tide is turning on that. I did read, while I was researching this book, I read a book that I recommend by Jonathan Balcombe about the secret lives of fish, which really did blow my mind in terms of the cognitive abilities of fish. And I think that many of us have grown up with this idea that fish are somehow dumber than land animals or that they don't, you know, that they don't feel pain, is a common thing that people have said about fish. This is not true. So I think that much of this applies to, you know, to the marine world as well. And in the book, I talk about, you know, what can we do for wild animals? And honestly, one of the biggest things we can do is try to address climate change and habitat destruction. That's really the biggie, because then we'd have fewer of these confusing conundrums where we have to decide whether or not to intervene in these complicated ways. If they have more space and they have a more stable climate, they can do a lot of flourishing on their own and we don't have to get into as many moral dilemmas. So honestly, if you find these ethical pickles uncomfortable, the best way to avoid the ethical pickle is to create a lot of stable habitat for non-humans.
爱玛:嗯,这是个好问题 首先我认为,很多我关于动物园的意见 也适用于水族馆 你也知道,之前有一场公共讨论 是关于鲸鱼和其他海洋哺乳动物的 由此我认为社会倾向正在转变 在写作这本书进行调查时,我也读到了相关材料 我阅读了一本值得推荐的书,由佐纳登所著 关于鱼类的秘密生活 它让我很震惊 讲到了鱼类的认知能力 我想我们中很多人从小就一直觉得 鱼类比陆生动物更愚蠢 或是觉得它们感觉不到疼痛 人们经常有这种关于鱼类的论调 但并不正确 所以我认为这里的很多内容也适用于 海洋世界 而在我的书中,我说到了能为野生动物做什么 说实话 我们能做的最大的事情就是解决气候变化问题 和环境破坏问题 这两个都是大任务 因为解决它们后我们的难题会更少 在决定是否要介入干涉 采取复杂行为方式这方面 如果有更多生存空间,更稳定的气候 动物们能够自己繁荣 我们也不需要陷入道德困境 所以说实在的,如果你发现这些道德选择令人不适 最好的解决方法 就是为人类之外的生物创造更稳定的栖息地
DB: So you mentioned the Inuit earlier and their special relationship with the polar bear. Is there a way that we could better, kind of, steward wild areas, Lynn wants to know, and perhaps the folks who have been living alongside those wild animals the longest could be paid or hired in some way to be caretakers of that wild environment?
大卫:您前面提到了因纽特人 以及他们与北极熊的特殊关系 那么我们是否有办法为野外环境做点更好的事 这是Lynn提的问题 她也想知道能为这些与野生动物共存最久的人们做点什么 比如支付酬劳或雇佣做事等方式 让他们成为野外环境的保护者?
EM: Yeah, I think that is kind of how the conservation movement is trending, honestly, I think indigenous protected areas are the sort of hot new topic in conservation. They're getting set up in different parts around the world. Canada has just announced quite a few of them over the last five years. There was a paper that came out recently that got a lot of attention, showing that in Australia, Brazil and Canada, indigenous protected areas have higher levels of biodiversity than parks, suggesting that, yes, those management approaches that are millennia-old are really effective in keeping a kind of a multi-species-community going. So I think there's a lot of interest in that, a lot of hope that could be a way forward. In the book, I talk about going to the Peruvian Amazon, where there's a big park called Manu, which is one of the highest biodiversity parks probably on Earth, and they have people living inside of it, the Machiguenga, and some more sort of old-fashioned conservationists feel that the presence of the Machiguenga in the park is a problem because they hunt there. But it seems pretty clear from the research I read and from my time that I spent in the park that they're actually acting as de facto biodiversity managers and guards. And yes, they're hunting, but they're hunting in a sustainable way. So, yeah, I think that this is honestly the best way forward, right, because it marries the sort of justice cause of indigenous sovereignty with the pragmatic cause of getting the people who are best qualified to manage landscapes on the job. So, yes, I agree with Lynn completely.
爱玛:是的,我想这也是现在的环保运动的行动趋势 事实上,我认为社区保护地 也是现在有关保护的新兴大热话题 在世界上的不同地方设立都有设立这种保护区 加拿大在过去五年宣布了一些 最近也有个报告引起了广泛关注 报告表示,在澳大利亚、巴西和加拿大 社区保护地比国家公园的生物多样性水平更高 说明,确实 这些历经千年的管理手段 在维持一个多物种社区的延续中非常有效 在我看来社会对此也很感兴趣 希望它能成为一种好的促进方法 在书中,我谈到了秘鲁的亚马逊雨林区域 那里有一个大型国家公园,马努国家公园 它可能是世界上生物种类最多的的国家公园 还有人类居住其中 是马奇根加人 一些传统的环境保护者觉得 马奇根加人在国家公园中出现是一个问题 因为他们狩猎 但我所读到的研究中明确指出 我自己的亲身经验也说明 他们其实在作为生物多样性管理者和守卫者行动 确实,他们狩猎,但是以一种可持续方式 所以我确实认为这是最好的方法。对。 因为它将地区自主发展的正义事业 和实际的行动结合 让最有资格来管理环境的人们承担这份工作 所以是的,我完全同意Lynn
DB: Amazing. Well, thank you again for this wonderful talk and conversation. And it truly is a great book. Best of luck with with everything.
DB:真好 再次感谢您的发言和交流 这是一本很好的书。 祝您一切顺利
EM: Great. Thanks so much.
EM:好的,非常感谢
DB: Goodbye and thank you.
DB:再见,非常感谢
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