纳米比亚将拍卖170头野生大象，尽管国际社会要求停止拍卖

纳米比亚将拍卖170头野生大象，尽管国际社会要求停止拍卖

The Namibian government is set to sell 170 wild elephants to international buyers in a controversial auction taking place today in the face of a petition of more than 100,000 signatures condemning the sale. Conservationists behind the appeal to stop the sale warn that claims of human-elephant conflict have been exaggerated by the Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Tourism to paint a picture of an environment overrun with animals, despite the statistics that elephants are now extinct from 29 African countries.

纳米比亚政府准备将170头野生大象卖给国际买家，今天举行了一场有争议的拍卖，十万多人签名谴责这一交易。呼吁停止出售大象的自然资源保护人士警告称，尽管有统计数据显示，29个非洲国家的大象已经灭绝，但环境、林业和旅游部夸大了人象冲突的说法，把环境描绘成动物泛滥的景象。

Elephants are under increasing threat from poaching and unlawful killings. In the last 100 years, Africa has lost almost 95 percent of its resident elephants and 8-10 percent of those that have survived are killed annually.

大象受到偷猎和非法捕杀的威胁越来越大。在过去的100年里，非洲已经失去了95%的常驻大象，每年有8%到10%的幸存大象被杀害。

Some of the elephants that were captured by the Namibian government are trans-boundary herds that make enormous migrations across the continent of Africa, as herds have done for thousands of years. Conservation workers standing to protect these animals argue that their wanderlust lifestyle means they can’t be claimed by any one country and thus be mistreated, slaughtered, or sold under local government rule.

纳米比亚政府捕获的一些大象是跨界的象群，它们在非洲大陆进行了大规模的迁徙，就像象群几千年来一直做的那样。保护这些动物的环保工作者认为，它们流浪的生活方式意味着它们不会被任何一个国家认领，因此不会在当地政府的统治下被虐待、屠杀或出售。

Rachael Funnell

According to a report provided to IFLScience by conservationist Mark Hiley, Operation Director of National Park Rescue, the Namibian Government (NGov) have claimed they have “too many” elephants, but their numbers are officially just 23,736 – far lower than their smaller neighbor, Botswana, which is home to around 130,000. Conservationists estimate that between 17,256 and 20,000 of these elephants are trans-boundary migratory elephants that move between Namibia, Angola, Zambia, and Botswana and that Namibia's resident population is more likely around 5,688.

根据国家公园救援组织的运营总监、自然资源保护主义者马克·希利向IFLScience提供的一份报告，纳米比亚政府(NGov)声称他们有“太多的”大象，但官方公布的数量只有23736只，远低于其较小的邻国博茨瓦纳，博茨瓦纳的数量约有13万。环保人士估计，其中有17,256至20,000头大象是跨界迁徙的大象，它们在纳米比亚、安哥拉、赞比亚和博茨瓦纳之间迁徙，而纳米比亚的常住大象数量更有可能在5688头左右。

The populations in Botswana suffered their own tragedy last year as hundreds of elephants were lost in a mass die off event, the exact cause of which remains unclear despite claims that cyanobacteria in small pools of water was to blame.

去年，博茨瓦纳的大象也遭遇了灾难，数百头大象集体死亡，确切原因尚不清楚，尽管有人声称小水池里的蓝藻是罪魁祸首。

Even using NGovs self-reported estimates puts Namibia's population well below its smaller neighbor. Botswana's. Image credit: Jonathan Pledger/Shutterstock.com

In 2017, NGov controversially refused to take part in the first pan-African “Great Elephant Survey,” meaning it may not have followed the standardized methodology for estimating population sizes and could be exaggerating population statistics and human-wildlife conflict. It’s feared that revenue-generating initiatives could be motivating the inflation of these numbers, examples of which include demand from high hunting quotas, sales to zoos, and ivory-generating culls.

2017年，有争议的是，NGov拒绝参加第一次泛非“大象调查”，这意味着它可能没有遵循估计人口规模的标准化方法，可能夸大了人口统计数据和人类与野生动物之间的冲突。人们担心，创收的举措可能会推动这些数字的膨胀，例如高狩猎配额的需求、对动物园的销售，以及产生对象牙的贪欲。

“For thousands of years matriarch elephants have led their herds across multiple countries on huge migrations each year,” wrote Hiley in a press release emailed to IFLScience. “Although we’ve slaughtered 95 percent of all elephants in 100 years, the last of these great herds still carry out their epic journeys. These international elephants don’t ‘belong’ to anyone and Namibia’s proposal to capture and exploit them is rightly being seen as a crime against nature.”

希利在发给IFLScience的一份新闻稿中写道:“数千年来，每年母象都会带领它们的象群穿越多个国家进行大规模迁徙。”“尽管我们在100年里屠杀了95%的大象，但最后一批大象仍在进行它们史诗般的旅程。这些国际大象不‘属于’任何人，纳米比亚捕捉和利用它们的提议正被视为违反自然的罪行。”