比污染还糟：疯狂的蚂蚁，食鸟鼠，还有惨遭屠杀的貂

They read like creatures in a gothic novel, but the species we've introduced round the world are real and cause untold harm

它们读着就像是哥特小说里才有的生物，但世界上我们引入的这些物种却是真实存在且会引起未知影响的。

Support our campaign to protect the Earth's species

支持我们的保护地球物种动物吧。

On a dark night last week a group of animal rights activists in Donegal made their own special contribution to the International Year of Biodiversity. They cut their way into a fur farm and released 5,000 mink. This, within their circles, was considered a clever thing to do. A spokesperson for the Alliance for Animal Rights said: "I commend whoever risked their freedom to do this." The Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade announced that "we fully support what has happened".

上周一个漆黑的夜晚，多尼哥的一队动物权益主义者对生物多样性国际年以自己的方式做出了特别的贡献。他们溜进毛皮动物养殖场释放了5,000只貂。在动物保护的圈子里，这也被认为是个明智之举。动物权益联盟的发言人说：“我对任何冒着坐牢危险做这件事的人表示赞赏。”废除毛皮交易联盟称“我们完全支持所发生的事。”

Had these people tipped a tanker load of bleach into the headwaters of the river Finn, they would have done less damage. The effects would be horrible for a while, but the ecosystem could then begin to recover. The mink, by contrast, will remain at large for years, perhaps millennia. Like many introduced species, American mink can slash their way through the ecosystem, as they have no native predators, and their prey species haven't evolved to avoid them. Is there anything the animal lovers in Donegal could have done that would have harmed more animals?

要是这些人把一油轮的漂白剂推翻到费恩河的源头的话，所造成的破坏会减少。影响一时之间可能会很恐怖，但是生态系统此时开始得到修复。相反的，貂也能自由过上数年，或许千年的太平生活。就如许多引进的物种一样，美国貂也能通过生态系统杀出一片生机，因为它们没有本土的天敌，而它们所掠食的物种还没有进化到可以躲避它们的掠食。多尼哥的动物热爱者们就没做过伤害更多动物的事吗?

But there's a second question raised by this act of preternatural imbecility: what were the mink doing there anyway? In other respects the Irish Republic appears to be a civilised country, in this case it looks barbaric. While the United Kingdom banned fur-farming in 2000, Irish governments have resisted prohibition, to protect a tiny but wildly destructive industry. The republic's five remaining fur farms are the sole source of continuing releases of mink, either through raids or accidents. They are also places of astonishing cruelty, in which intelligent carnivores are confined to cages the size of a few shoeboxes. The Irish government is considering phasing out fur farming in 2012. Until then, its citizens will continue to pay more to eradicate mink than they make from breeding them.

但这次极其愚蠢的行为引发了另一个问题：那些貂在那里干嘛?在其他方面爱尔兰共和国似乎是个开化的国家，但在毛皮交易一事看上去就挺野蛮的。2000年英国废止了毛皮动物的饲养，爱尔兰下却违背禁令，去保护这一小型却破坏性广泛的行业。爱尔兰共和国的五个毛皮动物养殖场都是提供毛皮的独家厂商且它们都通过捕猎或意外获取的方式得到貂。这几家养殖场同时还是惊人的残忍之地，在这里高级的食草动物被关在一些鞋盒大小般的笼子里。爱尔兰政府正考虑2012年逐渐废止毛皮动物养殖。到那时，爱尔兰的国民的注意力会更多地集中在貂的灭绝上，而不是饲养它们用来制作毛皮产品上。

But Ireland is a small player. Two-thirds of the world's mink farming and 70% of its fox farming takes place in other EU countries. Denmark alone produces 40% of the global supply of mink pelts. Feral American mink on the continent are even more damaging than they are here, as they drive out the endangered European mink. The EU's 6,000 fur farms are an affront to the values it proclaims.

但爱尔兰只是个小参与者。世界上三分之二的貂养殖业与百分之七十的狐狸养殖业都出现在欧洲别的国家。仅丹麦就出产全球貂皮供应的百分之四十。野生美国貂对这块大陆造成的破坏甚至比在美国本地更甚，因为它们把濒危的欧洲貂赶走了。欧盟的6,000个毛皮动物养殖场公然侮辱了它所宣布的价值观。

This month governments meet at Nagoya, in Japan, to review the Convention on Biological Diversity. It has, so far, been a dismal failure. Perhaps the starkest botch has been their inability or unwillingness to control the spread of invasive species. The stories I am about to tell read like a gothic novel.

本月在日本名古屋各国政府会见以回顾生物多样性协定。迄今为止，此协定只能落得个凄凉的失败。也许刻板的修补更彰显各国政府的无能为力或是对控制入侵物种蔓延的不情愿。我要讲述的故事读来会像是哥特小说。

Consider, for example, the walking catfish, which is now colonising China, Thailand and the US, after escaping from fish farms and ornamental ponds. It can move across land at night, reaching water no other fish species has colonised. It slips into fish farms and quietly works through the stock. It can burrow into the mud when times are hard and lie without food for months, before exploding back into the ecosystem when conditions improve. It eats almost anything that moves.

举个例子，一想到鲶鱼，这种鱼种在逃出鱼养殖场和观赏性的池子之后如今在中国，泰国和美国得到繁殖。它能在夜间穿过陆地到达没有其他鱼种繁殖的水域。它溜进鱼场，静悄悄地闯过水中的树枝。它能在爆破回到生态系统，条件得到改善前，危机来临时藏匿于泥泞中数月不进食。

Its terrestrial equivalent is the cane toad, widely introduced in the tropics to control crop pests. It's omnivorous and just about indestructible: one specimen was seen happily consuming a lit cigarette butt. Nothing which tries to eat it survives: it's as dangerous to predators as it is to prey. Unlike other amphibians, it can breed in salty water: it's as if it had waddled out of the pages of Karel Capek's novel War With the Newts.

鲶鱼等同于蟾蜍的陆栖能力，使它在热带被广泛引入以遏止庄嫁害虫。杂食且无破坏性：很高兴看到一个令人眼前一亮的样本。没有生物吃了它还能幸存：对于掠食者而言，吃了它就像被它掠食了一样危险。与其他两栖动物不同的是，它可以饲养在咸水里：“就好像从卡雷尔.卡佩克的小说<<蝾螈之战>>里晃晃悠悠走出来的生物。”

The world's most important seabird colony – Gough Island in the South Atlantic – is now being threatened by an unlikely predator: the common house mouse. After escaping from whaling boats 150 years ago, it quickly evolved to triple in size, and switched from herbivory to eating flesh. The seabirds there have no defences against predation, so the mouse simply walks into their nests and starts eating the chicks alive. Among their prey are albatross fledglings, which weigh some 300 times as much as the mice. A biologist who has witnessed this carnage observed that "it is like a tabby cat attacking a hippopotamus".

界上最重要的海鸟繁殖地――南大西洋戈夫岛――现在正在受一种不像是掠食者的生物所威胁：常见的家鼠。自150年前从捕鲸船跑出来以后，这种家鼠很快就进化到原大小的三倍，由食草变成食肉。那儿的海鸟对动物的掠食行为毫无防备，所以老鼠们轻而易举地就走进了海鸟的巢穴并开始进食它们的幼崽。这些老鼠的掠食对象当中还有信天翁的幼鸟，这种幼鸟的体重约是老鼠的300倍。一名生物学家见证了这场屠杀，从中观察到“这就像一只虎斑猫袭击一头河马。”

On Christmas Island the yellow crazy ant does something similar: it eats alive any animal it finds in its path. It is also wiping out the rainforest, by farming the scale insects that feed on tree-sap. Similar horror stories are unfolding almost everywhere. The species we introduce, unlike the pollution we produce, don't stop when we do. A single careless act (think of the introduction of the rabbit or the lantana plant to Australia) can transform the ecology of a continent.

圣诞岛上的黄疯蚁也会做类似的事情：它会吃掉路遇的所有活物。同时它还利用那些以树液为生的介壳虫助自己扫荡雨林。同样恐怖的事几乎到处都有。我们引入的物种，可不同于我们产生的污染，我们停止行动的时候这些物种不会停止进入。一不留神（想到兔子或是澳大利亚的马樱丹草的引入）能改变一个大陆的生态。

According to a government report, invasive species cost Britain several billion pounds a year. The global damage they cause, it says, amounts to almost 5% of the world economy. A single introduced species – a speargrass called Imperata – keeps 2 million square kilometres in the tropics out of agricultural production, equivalent to the arable area of the US, while ensuring that the native ecosystem can't regenerate.

根据一份政府报告显示，对付这些入侵物种每年要耗费英国政府几十亿英镑。报告还说，这些物种造成的损失几乎占全球经济的5%。光是一种属白茅类的针茅草的引进物种就占据了本用于农业生产的200万平方米的热带区域，这相当于全美国的耕地总面积，使该国的生态系统无法重建。

In most cases there's a brief period in which an invasive species can be stopped. So you would expect governments to mobilise as soon as the threat appears. But in many parts of the world the policy appears to consist of staring dumbly at the problem while something can be done, then panicking when it's too late. When museum weed (Caulerpa taxifolia) escaped into the Mediterranean from the Oceanographic Museum in Monaco, the authorities responded by bickering over whose fault it was. In 1984, when the invasion was first documented, the weed occupied one square metre of seabed. It could have been eradicated in half an hour. Now it has spread across 13,000 hectares and appears to be uncontrollable.

大多数情况下，都有过入侵物种可被阻止的短暂时期，因此危机出现时，人们寄希望于政府发起动员，但在世界很多地方，在可采取相应措施的时候，政策却像在袖手旁观，直到为时已晚当局才惊慌失措。杉叶蕨藻从摩纳哥的海洋博物馆传入地中海时，当局的反应却是为谁应对此负责而争论不休。在首次记录该物种入侵的1984年，这种杂草占领了一平方米的海床，而这种杂草本可以在半小时内就被根除。如今它已蔓延至13，000公顷并呈显无法遏制的态势。

Australia, the continent that has been hit hardest by introductions, still seems incapable of regulating the trade in dangerous species. As the Guardian's new Biodiversity100 campaign shows, 90 potentially invasive plant species are being sold in nurseries there, while 210 species of aquarium fish can be imported without a licence. The UK has some good policies at home. It spent 10,000 in 2006, for example, on a strategy (successful so far) for excluding the South American water primrose, whose control now costs France several million euros a year. But in its overseas territories – of which Gough island is one – it reacts slowly, if at all.

在澳大利亚，这个受引入物种侵害最为严重的大陆，面对危险物种依然显得束手无策。如卫报新的“生物多样性一百运动”所言，90种具有潜在入侵性的植物物种幼苗销往澳洲大陆，同时还无证引入了210种观赏鱼类。而英国国内制订出了一些优良政策，例如2006年该国政府斥资1万英镑制订了一项策略（目前已获成功），将南美水樱草拒之门外，而法国政府却为此一年耗资数百万欧元。但在英国海外领地，如戈夫岛就是其中之一，如果有行动的话，也是反应迟缓，。

The mink, the walking catfish, the cane toad, the mutant house mouse, these are potent symbols of humanity's strangely lopsided power. We can sow chaos with a keystroke in an investment bank, one signal to a Predator drone, a seed dislodged from the sole of a boot, a fish tank emptied into a canal. But when asked to repair the mess we've made, we proclaim our impotence. Our challenge this century is to meet our capacity for harm with an equal power for good. We are not, so far, doing very well.

貂，鲶鱼，蟾蜍，变异的家鼠，都是人类奇怪畸形力量的有力证明。我们只消在投资银行动动键盘就能造成混乱，对掠夺者大黄蜂发出一个信号，就像是从靴底剔除一颗钉子一样容易，就像把一个鱼缸里的水倒入水沟一样。但当我们被问及如果解决我们所造成的烂摊子时，我们却在宣布我们的无能为力。本世纪我们的挑战就是用我们造福人类的能力来解决破坏这一问题。目前为止，我们做得还不够好。

A fully referenced version of this article can be found at www.monbiot.com

本文全部参阅内容来自www.monbiot.com.

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