生来狂野:将获得自由的熊猫幼崽

Pandas: cute but sexually inept and bamboozled by their own food requirements right? Not so. In fact it is life in captivity that disrupts the complex rhythm of panda mating behaviour with its territorial scent marking mating calls and complex social interactions.

熊猫： 可爱但性冷淡，而且对食物种类要求十分偏执？ 并非如此，事实上他们被圈养打乱了通过领地气味传达交配讯息和复杂的社交互动的复杂交配行为节奏。

Most pandas born in captivity will spend their lives there in China or on loan to zoos abroad. But at Hetaoping field station within Wolong reserve in a painstakingly slow process some pandas are being prepped for a future in the wild. These candidate animals are carefully sexted – they must be naturally wary of humans.

大部分圈养大熊猫终其一生生活在中国或者通过借贷到外国动物园里。但在卧龙保护区的核桃坪野化培训基地正在进行一项缓慢而艰辛的项目。一些熊猫在接受将来野外生存的训练。这些候选熊猫是精心挑选出来的——它们对人类必须保有天生的警惕心。

Baby pandas are tiny hairless and incredibly vulnerable. Captive-born babies are removed to incubators to increase their chances of survival where staff bottle-feed them rock them burp them and keep a close eye on errant toddlers – all the duties of a parent including the sleepless nights. But the babies sexted for a wilder future stay with their mothers before being moved to fenced-in habitats further up the mountain. Since 2006 five have been released (wearing tracking collars) and three are still alive. A handful of others are also being considered for release.

熊猫幼崽十分幼小，无毛，非常脆弱，圈养的熊猫宝宝将会被转移到育幼箱提高他们存活的几率。工作人员负责用奶瓶喂养他们，拍打他们让其打嗝并密切照看-身兼所有作为父母的责任包括不眠不休整晚，然而这些宝宝在转移到山上围栏栖息地之前会交于熊猫妈妈抚养进一步野化。自2006年以来基地已经野外放生了5只大熊猫（佩戴追踪器），目前存活了3只。基地正在考虑再少量放归一些。

Pandas need large territories: they eat about 9kg-18kg (20lb-40lb) of bamboo each day. In fact bones found in China indicate that pandas as we know them have been around for two million years and for all that time they thrived and spread throughout southern and eastern China northern Myanmar and Vietnam. Then came the human population boom and millennia of panda behaviour was disrupted in a few years.

熊猫需求大片领地：他们每天吃9-18公斤（20-40磅）竹子，事实上，通过中国发现的骨头显示熊猫已经存在了200万年并且活跃与扩张到中国南部和东部，缅甸和越南北部。随之人口爆炸性增长导致数千年来熊猫活动领地在短短几年被破坏。

With much of their habitat destroyed survivors became isolated – it is estimated that their current mountain habitat in China comprises just 1% of their original range. The 70s saw their nadir – with estimates of just 800 to 1000 left in the wild. In 1980 the China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda was founded at Wolong. Alongside government protection of their habitat this has seen numbers in the most recent survey (2014) rise to more than 1800. However scientific models suggest that global warming could reduce their remaining habitat by 60% in the next 70 years. Their continued survival is far from a black-and-white issue.

随着许多熊猫栖息地被破坏幸存下来的熊猫变得孤立起来——据估计它们现如今生存的山林栖息地范围地仅为当初的1%。在70年代大熊猫数量达到了历史最低点——据估计在野外仅有800-1000只存活。1980年中国大熊猫保护与研究中心在卧龙成立。随着政府对大熊猫栖息地的保护，在最近的调查中（2014）显示野外大熊猫的数量已经上升到了1800只。然而科学模型却暗示全球变暖会导致大熊猫栖息地在70年后减少60% 。它们的持续生存问题远远不像黑-与-白那样简单。