The only way to connect the major wildernesses of the world and
save their inhabitants is to think big – very big. Jim Giles investigates
IT ALL started with a wolf named Pluie. One rainy day in the summer of 1991, the 5-year-old female crossed paths with a team of researchers in the Peter Lougheed Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada. They captured her and fitted a collar and satellite transmitter. For the next two years, they watched in amazement as Pluie went on an epic journey – one that would ultimately inspire a new kind of conservation.
Pluie wandered across two Canadian provinces and three US states, spending time with five different packs (see map, page 43). In 1993, the signals from her collar ceased, and the battery from the transmitter was eventually found with a bullet hole in it. Nevertheless, Pluie survived for another two years until, in December 1995, a hunter shot her dead, together with her mate and three pups. By then she had covered terrain spread over an area of 100,000 square kilometres.
Wildlife experts knew that wolves and other carnivores sometimes roam across enormous areas in search of food or mates. But Pluie’s travels gave them pause for thought. Banff National Park in Alberta, one of Pluie’s haunts, is regarded as a vast wilderness. Yet she covered an area 15 times as large, and 10 times the size of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. It was clear that preserving these wildernesses, large as they are, would still not be enough to ensure the survival of long- distance travellers like Pluie.
Pluie has been dead for 13 years, but her trek lives on in the minds of conservationists. From Alaska to Australia, they are thinking big. Over the past few years, they have unveiled plans for new conservation areas of mind-boggling scale. Some want wildlife to roam freely from the west coast of Spain to the Carpathian mountains of eastern Europe. Another group envisages a 5000-kilometre- long wildlife thoroughfare that would run from Alaska to Mexico. These big ideas are now starting to take shape on the ground.
“This is not arm-waving fantasy,” says conservationist Harvey Locke, director emeritus of the Wildlands Network in Toronto, Canada. “These are projects with genuine traction. Nature is in dire trouble and we’re not proposing a tiny solution.”
The vision of Locke and his colleagues is to build vast corridors between existing protected areas. They are purchasing land outright wherever possible or making deals with landowners that impose conservation restrictions. Where these approaches aren’t possible, they are working with local people to promote wildlife conservation. Crossings over and under obstacles like highways are also being built. Each individual step is a drop in the ocean – but the hope is that they will add up to something spectacular.
Bridges allow bears to cross the Trans-Canada Highway (above), and there are plans to link the Yukon (below) to Yellowstone in the US
“Conservationists usually react to crises,” says Stephen Trombulak of Middlebury College in Vermont, who is working with a project called Two Countries, One Forest, a proposed network of wildlife corridors linking 330,000 square kilometres of land along the east coast of the US and Canada. “We want to be more proactive. We want to say: here is what the future could look like.”
Rhetoric like that has led hundreds of organisations to get involved in the schemes, which are often referred to as “wildlife megacorridors”. Conservationists have long recognised the value of corridors connecting wilderness areas, and mounting evidence shows that they help many species, from red squirrels to butterflies. Megacorridors take the idea to a new scale.
The poster child for the movement is the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y), which aims to create a 3000-kilometre corridor spanning the US-Canada border that will provide open passage for species from grizzly bears to pine martens. The corridor would be anchored by the legally protected wildernesses of Yellowstone to the south and Yukon in the north. In between lie other wild areas, such as the Banff National Park. However, there is also plenty of human activity to negotiate, from oil and gas drilling to roads that slice through the corridor.
Y2Y’s biggest obstacle is probably Highway 3, a two-lane road that cuts across the proposed corridor just north of the Canadian border. Traffic on the road deters grizzlies and other species from attempting to cross. As a result, bear populations to the south are becoming isolated from the much larger ones north of the road. Genetic analysis has revealed that the 100 or so animals making up one small southern population in the Selkirk mountains are starting to diverge from their northern neighbours, says Michael Proctor, co-director of the Trans-border Grizzly Bear Project in British Columbia. This suggests that Highway 3 is a serious obstacle to grizzly bear movement.
“Highway 3 is the do-or-die line for Y2Y,” says Locke. Yet the road is a major truck route and is not going to be removed. In fact, conservationists expect that it will soon be upgraded to four lanes.
Bear bridges
The solution? Bridges for bears. It may sound odd, but there is evidence that it works. During the 1990s, bridges and underpasses were built across a stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway which cuts through Banff National Park. Tony Clevenger of the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University in Bozeman has been monitoring the impact for over a decade. “It took the big carnivores four to five years to find the crossings and feel secure using them,” he says. Clevenger has now recorded over 100,000 crossings by 11 species of large mammal, including grizzlies, cougars and elk. That would be the level of movement expected were there no road through the area。
A similar project might allow grizzlies to cross Highway 3. Bridges and underpasses could be built if and when the highway upgrades take place. Y2Y is already working to identify places where grizzlies cross, so that they know where to push for bridges. Last year, the project spent US$225,000 on a plot of land at one crossing point. If they had not intervened, says Locke, the land would have been sold to a trailer park developer.
Independent conservation groups have stepped in to buy other key portions of land in the Y2Y area. For example, The Nature Conservancy and The Trust for Public Land have entered into a $500 million deal to buy 1250 square kilometres of Montana forest linking the Mission mountain and Bob Marshall wilderness areas towards the southern end of Y2Y.
The agreement ends fears that the landowner, Plum Creek Timber Company, would sell to property developers. The agreement will not, however, lead to the creation of a new wilderness, as harvesting of timber will continue after the land is sold. This might sound like a strange deal for environmental groups to strike, but logging will be tightly controlled and local people will continue to benefit from the money that the work brings in. It is an example of a win-win strategy that is being repeated across all the megacorridor projects.
In a similar deal, Pima county and the Arizona Land and Water Trust (ALWT) recently purchased 20 square kilometres of ranch land in Arizona. The parcel forms a link between two wilderness areas, Las Cienegas National Conservation Area and the Whetstone mountains. Ultimately it could be part of a vast corridor known as the Spine of the Continent, a huge umbrella project designed to connect several megacorridors, including Y2Y, to form a wildlife linkage stretching from Alaska to Mexico.
The Arizona land is already used by mountain lions and other rare species, but is also a working ranch. Neither ALWT nor the local community wanted the jobs and food it produces to disappear, so the terms of the $21 million deal allow the former owners to stay and work the land. The deeds have also been altered to limit grazing and fence construction and rule out development for housing. Deals like that also come cheaper than purchasing the land outright, which is one reason why ALWT has managed to protect 120 square kilometres since 2000.
Land deals are also a part of the proposed Great Mountain Corridor (GMC), a 1300-kilometre swathe of land connecting the Cantabrian mountains in Spain to the Italian Alps via the Pyrenees and Massif Central in France. It might even be extended into the Carpathian mountains of eastern Europe. “It’s not unrealistic to think that in 20 years there could be a good corridor between the Iberian Peninsula and the Balkans,” says Miquel Rafa of Obra Social Caixa Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain, a charitable organisation that is promoting the project.
Some of the land in the proposed corridor is already protected, and Rafa’s aim is to fill in the gaps. Over the past decade, his organisation has spent €8 million buying 80 square kilometres of land between the Cantabrians and the Pyrenees. He estimates that only another 80 square kilometres is needed to complete that part of the corridor.
Wolf reunion
There are already success stories to report. Last year, a wolf from the Cantabrians was spotted in the Pyrenees, not far from one of many packs that arrived there from the French Alps around 10 years ago – the first wolves in the Pyrenees since the 1930s. These packs made a hazardous crossing of the Rhône valley, parts of which are industrialised. It will be remarkable if groups from the Cantabrians and French Alps meet and breed in the Pyrenees, says Rafa, as the populations have been separated for over 800 years. To win local support, Rafa and colleagues have also provided shepherds with Pyrenean mountain dogs, a muscular breed that will defend livestock against wolves.
Predators such as wolves can range over vast areas
Ghana Gurung of WWF Nepal has gone a step further in his organisation’s bid to create the Terai Arc Megacorridor, a strip of continuous forest linking existing national parks and wildlife reserves along the Nepal- India border. This 50,000-square-kilometre stretch is home to rhinos, tigers, elephants and – unfortunately for those species – 6 million people. Gurung has persuaded farmers to take up a new type of crop – one that will make them money while helping the region’s dwindling wildlife.
Links between some of the protected areas are being eroded as people clear the land to grow food. The problem is compounded by the liking that deer and elephants have shown for traditional crops, and some farmers have started trapping or shooting the animals. To try and solve both problems at once, the WWF has promoted wild mint as an alternative source of income. The plant is not eaten by animals and its oil turns a good profit. “We piloted in areas where there was high crop damage by wildlife, but it was expanded to other areas also because farmers found it much more profitable,” says Gurung.
Meanwhile in Australia, the Great Eastern Ranges Initiative aims to provide a 2800-kilometre corridor running north-south along the country’s eastern flank, stretching from the Australian Alps in Victoria to northern Queensland.
Megacorridor projects are literally gaining ground all over the world, but each will take decades to create, and there are many threats that could derail them. Nepal’s government supports the Terai Arc Megacorridor, for example, but the country is so politically unstable that there is no guarantee of long- term backing. And despite land purchases in the US, future migration from cities to rural areas could still sever linkages. The Forest Service estimates that around 180,000 square kilometres of US forest land will be sold to developers during the next 30 years, half of it within 15 kilometres of protected forests. There is also the threat of climate change.
These long-term uncertainties mean it may be 50 or even 100 years before the impact of megacorridor projects can be properly judged. Perhaps that is an appropriate timescale for work that aims to reset the balance between humans and nature. It also means that the fate of the projects will lie not only with the ambition and perseverance of their current backers, but also with those the baton is handed to. “There is a need for staying power,” says Locke. “We have to advance our visions proudly and often, then withstand the critics and backlash that any bold idea attracts.” ■
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Jim Giles is a writer based in San Fransisco
发现美图，立马领走~
要想连接起世界上大片的野生动物活动地带，并拯救在那里居住的动物，唯一的办法就是往大了想，非常大。Jim Giles进行了调查。
一切都从一只名叫Pluie的狼开始。1991年夏季的一个雨天，五岁的小母狼在加拿大Alberta市省城公园的Peter Lougheed与一队研究人员穿梭在小路间(the 5-year-old female crossed paths with a team of researchers in the Peter Lougheed Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada.)。他们抓住了她，并给她带上了颈圈和卫星传输器。在之后的两年中，研究人员惊讶地观察着Pluie开始的一次伟大的征程——这将最终唤起一种新的动物保护。
Pluie在加拿大的两个省和美国的三个州之间徘徊游荡，spending time with five different packs。在1993年，来自她颈圈里的信号终止了，传输器中的电池最终被发现留下了一个子弹洞。然而，Pluie还是又存活了两年，直到1995年12月，一个猎人将她和她的同伴以及三只小狗击毙。到那时为止，她已经横跨了十万平方公里的地区。
野生动物专家知道，狼和其他一些食肉动物有时会为了寻找食物和配偶在相当大的一片区域里四处游荡。但是Pluie的“旅行”却使他们重新思考了这个问题。Alberta市的Banff国家公园是Pluie常去的地方，那里被认为是一片广袤的野生动物活动地，它占据了相当于Wyoming市的Yellowstone国家公园十五倍大，十倍size的面积(Yet she covered an area 15 times as large, and 10 times the size of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.)。很清楚，保存这片那么大的野生动物活动区仍然不能确保象Pluie这样的长途旅行者的生存。
Pluie已经死了十三年了，但她的旅行生涯却留在了野生动物保护主义者们的脑海中。从阿拉斯加到澳大利亚，他们在往大里想。在过去的几年中，他们已经揭开了开创新的mind-boggling规模保护区计划的面纱。一些人希望野生动物可以从西班牙的西部海岸线到东欧的Carpathian山区间自由的穿行。另一些人则展望着开辟一条从阿拉斯加到墨西哥的长达五千公里的野生动物通行大道。这些伟大的想法现在已开始成形on the ground。
“这不是挥一挥手臂的突发奇想，”野生动物保护主义者Harvey Locke说道，他是加拿大多伦多市野生陆地动物网站的名誉主席。“这是一项具有真正魅力的计划。自然界正处在可怕的困境之中，而我们却尚未提出哪怕是微小的一项解决方案。”
Locke和他的同事们的观点是在现存的保护区之间建立大量的通道。他们正在购买任何可能的地方的土地使用权，或是与对保护区苛加税赋限制的土地主进行交易。当这些方法都行不通时，他们就同当地的人们一起努力，促进对野生动物的保护。在象高速公路这样的障碍物的上方和下方也正在建立通道。每采取一步行动都好似大海里的一滴水，但希望它们最终会汇聚成一项壮观的事业。
桥梁使得灰熊可以从上面穿越加拿大的高速公路，一项从下面连接Yukon和美国Yellowstone的计划正在进行中。
“野生动物保护主义者们通常会对危机作出反应，”Vermont市Middlebury学院的Stephen Trombulak说，他正致力于一项名为“两个国家、一个森林”的计划方案，该方案提出了一个沿着美国和加拿大东部海岸线，连接三十三万平方公里陆地的野生动物通道网络。“我们想要更加采取主动。我们想说：这就是未来的雏形。”
Rhetoric like that这使得成百上千的机构介入到这项计划中，通常被比作“野生动物大型通道(wildlife megacorridors)”。野生动物保护主义者们长久以来认识到在野生动物活动区域间建立通道的价值，并提供了证据表明这会帮助许多物种的生存繁衍，从红松鼠到蝴蝶。“大型通道”走上了新的规模。
The poster child for the movement is the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y), 旨在开辟一条三千公里横跨美国和加拿大边境的，为从灰熊到水貂的野生动物提供的开放的通道。这一通道将被固定在Yellowstone南边和Yukon北部的野生动物法定保护区内。其中也有其他野生区域，比如Banff国家公园。然而，还有许多人类活动需要磋商，从石油和天然气的开掘到建立通道的道路建设。
YSY最大的障碍可能是高速公路三，它是一条双车道的道路，阻隔了之前提出的“通道”中通往加拿大边境的北部地区。该道路的交通状况妨碍了大灰熊和其他物种试图穿越它的可能。结果，道路南面的灰熊就与道路北面大量的灰熊隔离开来了。基因分析显示，一百个左右的动物组成了Selkirk山区的小规模南部种群，它们正开始与其北部的邻居分离开来，英国哥伦比亚大学“跨边境灰熊项目”的合作负责人Michael Proctor说道。这表明高速公路三是灰熊活动中一大严重的障碍。
“高速公路三是YSY中的一条三八线，”Locke说道。而这条公路是一条主干道，不可能被废除。事实上，野生动物保护主义者们期待这条公路在不久将会被抬高至四车道。
灰熊桥梁
解决方法？为灰熊造起一座桥梁。这也许听起来很奇怪，但已有证据表明它是奏效的。20世纪90年代期间，在加拿大高速公路延伸的地方which cuts through Banff国家公园，都建有桥梁和地下通道。Bozeman市Montana州立大学西方交通研究所的Tony Clevenger十年来一直都在监控这种影响。“大型食肉动物需花费四到五年的时间来找到crossings，并在使用时感到安全，”他说。Clevenger现在已经记录到有超过十万crossings by包括灰熊、美洲狮、大角鹿在内的十一种大型哺乳动物。That would be the level of movement expected were there no road through the area。
另一项类似的计划可以使灰熊通过高速公路三。如果当高速公路被抬高以后，那么桥梁和地下通道就可以被建立起来了。YSY已经着手确定灰熊通过的具体位置，才可以知道在哪里建桥。去年，该计划在a plot of land at one crossing point上花费了22.5万美元。如果他们没有干涉，Locke说，那么这片土地就会被卖给公园开发商。
独立保护组织也进一步购买YSY区域中其他重要的土地部分。例如，自然保护与公共土地基金组织(Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land)已经斥资五十亿来购买连接Mission山区和Bob Marshall野生动物活动区，通往YSY南部尽头的Montana森林1250平方公里的地区。
在协议的尾页中(The agreement ends)有担心土地主，Plum Creek Timber公司，会把土地卖给财产开发商(property developers)。然而，协议不会带来新的野生动物保护区的建立，这是由于harvesting of timber在土地被卖之后仍会继续。对于环保组织而言，这听起来象是一宗很奇怪的交易，但伐木将受到严格的控制，当地的人们将会持续受益于the money that the work brings in。这是双赢策略的很好范例，并正在所有的“大型通道”计划中被重复借鉴使用。
在另一宗类似的交易中，Pima郡和亚里桑那土地水资源基金组织(ALWT)最近买下了亚里桑那州农场土地二十平方公里的土地。The parcel成了连接Las Cienegas国家保护区和Whetstone山区这两个野生动物活动区的枢纽，最终它将成为大型通道的一部分，以“北美洲的脊柱”而著称，这项“大雨伞”计划被设计用于连接包括YSY在内的几个大型通道，从而形成从阿拉斯加到墨西哥的野生动物联接区。
亚里桑那的土地已被山区的狮子和其他稀有物种占用，但还是一个working ranch。ALWT和地方社区都既不想放弃农场创造的工作机会，也不想失去农场生产出的食物，所以2100万的买卖允许之前的土地拥有者留在这块土地上工作(the term of the 21 million deal allow the former owners to stay and work the land)。The deeds have also been altered to limit grazing and fence construction and rule out development for housing. 这样的买卖要比买下房屋的产权要便宜，这也是ALWT从2000年以来能够成功保护120平方公里土地的原因之一。
土地买卖也是“伟大的山区通道(GMC)”计划的一部分，这是一片连接西班牙堪特伯莱山脉与意大利阿尔卑斯山脉，途经法国Pyrenees和Massif中心的1300公里的土地。它甚至可以延伸到东欧Carpathian山脉。“二十年后，在Iberian Peninsula与Balkans之间可能出现一条很好的通道，这不是不现实的，”西班牙巴塞罗纳Obra Social Caixa Catalunya的Miquel Rafa说道，这是一个促进该计划的慈善机构。
“通道”中的部分土地已经受到保护，Rafa的目标是要填补其中的空缺。在过去的几十年中，他的机构已经花费800万买下了位于Cantabrians和Pyrenees间的80平方公里的土地。他估计再需要80平方公里的土地就可以完成“通道”计划了。
狼的联合
已经记录到一些成功的事例了。去年，来自Cantabrians的一匹狼was spotted in the Pyrenees，离大约十年前从法国阿尔卑斯山来的许多野兽群(not far from one of many packs that arrived there from the French Alps around 10 years ago)——从20世纪三十年代以来Pyrenees地区的第一批狼群。这些狼群成了Rhone valley的一个危险的交叉口，part of which are industrialised. 如果来自Cantabrians的狼群与来自法国阿尔卑斯山脉的狼群在Pyrenees会合并繁衍的话，那么这将是引人注目的，Rafa说，因为这两组狼群已经被分开800多年了。为了得到地方上的支持，Rafa和他的同事为Pyenean山区的狗配备了shepherds
它们是一种肌肉发达的物种，会保护山区的狗免遭狼的袭击。
象狼这样的食肉动物遍布在广大的区域中。
WWF Nepal的Ghana Gurung进一步促进他的机构创立Terai Arc Megacorridor，a strip of continuous forest沿着尼泊尔—印度边境连接现有的国家公园与野生动物保护区。这一可伸展至五万平方公里的地带是犀牛、老虎、大象以及600万人的家园，虽然对这些动物们来说这可能是不幸的。Gurung说服了农民们采用新型的农耕，这会使他们在帮助该地区正日益减少的野生动物的同时，又能赚到钱。
由于人们要在土地上种植作物，连接一些保护区的土地正受到侵蚀。因为存在这样的可能性，即鹿和大象have shown for传统作物，一些农民开始捕获或者射杀这些动物，从而使问题变得复杂化了。为了尝试立即解决这两个问题，WWF已经promoted wild mint作为一种可供选择的收入来源。植物不再会被动物所吞食，植物油就成了很好的收益。“
与此同时，在澳大利亚，Great Eastern Ranges Initiative打算建造一条南北走向沿着该国东侧，从澳大利亚维多利亚港山延伸至北部昆士兰州的2800公里的通道。
大型通道计划正逐渐获得全世界的支持，但每条通道都将花费几十年的时间才能建造起来，还有许多使它的建造偏离正轨的威胁。例如尼泊尔政府支持Terai Arc Megacorridor，但这个国家的政治太不稳定，根本无法确保长期的支持。就算不考虑美国的土地买卖，将来从城市搬进农村的大量移民仍然会破坏这种连接。Forest Service估计，美国大约18万平方公里的森林土地会在接下来的三十年间被出售给开发商，而其中半数的土地在被保护森林的15公里以内。气候变化也是一大威胁。
这种长期规划的不确定性意味着可能要经过50年甚至100年的时间才能判断大型通道计划所产生的影响。也许对于重新调整人类与自然间平衡的目标而言，这是一个合理的时间跨度。它还可能意味着该计划的命运将不仅依赖于现今支持者们的雄心壮志和坚持，同时也依赖于这一“指挥棒”传下去接棒的人。“我们需要持久的力量，”Locke说，“我们必须常常高瞻远瞩，then withstand the critics and backlash that any bold idea attracts.”
你干嘛不拍下来。。。。。。
楼上已经翻了这么多了，我就不夺人之美了- -
……每次都被抢走……
每次回宿舍一上网就捶胸顿足啊，能不能放个午夜档抢搞帖，夜猫子专用啊。。。。