TED演讲 | 改变荒漠现状,扭转气候变化

墨安 TED每日推荐 2022-12-16

| 简介

对于正在沦为沙漠的土地而言，荒漠化这个术语不过是个好听点儿的说法罢了。Allan Savory在这个充满力量的演讲开头这样说。而令人吃惊的是，荒漠化正吞噬着全球大约三分之二的草地，它加速了气候变化，并导致一些传统的放牧社会出现混乱。Savory一生都在致力于和荒漠化的抗衡。如今他坚信----他的工作成果也表明----有一个惊人的因素能够保护草地，并使那些昔日贫瘠的土地重现生机。

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| 中英对照演讲稿

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The most massive tsunami perfect storm is bearing down upon us.

这场最强大的、完美海啸风暴正在击垮我们。

This perfect storm is mounting a grim reality, increasingly grim reality,

这场完美风暴（指独立发生时没有危险性，但同时发生时会带来灾难性后果的事件组合）正在加剧一个严峻的现实，日趋严峻的现实，

and we are facing that reality with the full belief that we can solve our problems with technology, and that's very understandable.

我们满怀着一种信念来面对这个现实，就是我们能够用技术来解决这些问题，这是非常可以理解的。

Now, this perfect storm that we are facing is the result of our rising population,

现在，我们面临的完美风暴是我们人口增长的结果，

rising towards 10 billion people, land that is turning to desert, and, of course, climate change.

增长到100亿的人，土地在变成沙漠，当然，气候变化了。

Now there's no question about it at all: we will only solve the problem of replacing fossil fuels with technology.

对这些，毫无疑问：我们只会用技术来取代化石燃料来解决问题。

But fossil fuels, carbon -- coal and gas -- are by no means the only thing that is causing climate change.

化石燃料，碳元素——煤和天然气——绝不是唯一导致气候变化的东西。

Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert, and this happens only when we create too much bare ground.

荒漠化，一个华丽大词是来描述正在变成荒漠的土地，这种情形的产生是因为我们制造了太多的荒地。

There's no other cause. And I intend to focus on most of the world's land that is turning to desert.

没有别的原因。我打算把重点放在世界上大部分正在变成沙漠的土地。

But I have for you a very simple message that offers more hope than you can imagine.

我有一个非常简单的信息给你们，它提供了比你们想象的更多的希望。

We have environments where humidity is guaranteed throughout the year.

我们有些环境，那儿的湿度全年有保证。

On those, it is almost impossible to create vast areas of bare ground.

这些地方，几乎不可能形成大面积的裸露的地面。

No matter what you do, nature covers it up so quickly.

不管你做什么，大自然会很快盖住这些土地。

And we have environments where we have months of humidity followed by months of dryness, and that is where desertification is occurring.

我们有些环境那里有几个月有雨水，接着有几个月的干旱期，在这里就在发生荒漠化。

Fortunately, with space technology now, we can look at it from space, and when we do, you can see the proportions fairly well.

幸运的是，借助航天技术的发展，我们能从太空看到地球全貌，你们能很清楚的看到不同地貌的比例。

Generally, what you see in green is not desertifying, and what you see in brown is,

总体上，你们看到的绿色是不会荒漠化的，而你们看到的棕色区域会荒漠化，

and these are by far the greatest areas of the Earth.

这些区域目前是地球上最大的区域。

About two thirds, I would guess, of the world is desertifying.

我猜想，世界有三分之二在荒漠化。

I took this picture in the Tihamah Desert while 25 millimeters -- that's an inch of rain -- was falling.

这张照片是我在提哈迈沙漠拍的——下着25毫米（一英寸）的雨。

Think of it in terms of drums of water, each containing 200 liters.

把它想成是装在桶里，每桶装200升。

Over 1,000 drums of water fell on every hectare of that land that day.

那天每公顷的土地上下了1000桶水。

The next day, the land looked like this. Where had that water gone?

第二天，土地是这个样子。那些水去哪里了？

Some of it ran off as flooding, but most of the water that soaked into the soil simply evaporated out again, exactly as it does in your garden if you leave the soil uncovered.

一部分流走了，大部分水渗进了土壤又蒸发掉了，这跟你的花园里发生的过程一样，裸露的地方很快就会变干。

Now, because the fate of water and carbon are tied to soil organic matter, when we damage soils, you give off carbon.

现在，因为水和碳元素，都是被保存在土壤有机质中的，当我们破坏了土壤，我们就释放出了碳元素。（以二氧化碳或甲烷的形式）。

Carbon goes back to the atmosphere.

碳元素回到大气层。

Now you're told over and over, repeatedly, that desertification is only occurring in arid and semi-arid areas of the world,

这些话你们现在已经听了很多遍，荒漠化只出现在世界的干旱和半干旱地区，

and that tall grasslands like this one in high rainfall are of no consequence.

像这样的高原，降雨量再高也没有结果。

But if you do not look at grasslands but look down into them,

但如果你不是远远的看，而是看草地的土壤表面，

you find that most of the soil in that grassland that you've just seen is bare and covered with a crust of algae, leading to increased runoff and evaporation.

你会发现草地里大部分的土壤表面都是光秃秃的，只有很少的藻类覆盖在上面，这导致了水分的流失和蒸发。

That is the cancer of desertification that we do not recognize till its terminal form.

这是导致荒漠化的致命原因，而我们直到荒漠化的末期才会察觉。

Now we know that desertification is caused by livestock, mostly cattle, sheep and goats, overgrazing the plants, ok? Leaving the soil bare and giving off methane.

现在我们知道沙漠化是由家畜，多数是牛、绵羊和山羊等，过度放牧，吃光了植被，使得土壤表面裸露出来并释放甲烷。

Almost everybody knows this, from nobel laureates to golf caddies, or was taught it, as I was.

几乎人人都知道这点，从诺贝尔奖获得者到高尔夫球童，都和我一样都这么教育过。

Now, the environments like you see here, dusty environments in Africa where I grew up,

你们看到的这些环境，尘土飞扬的非洲，是我成长的地方，

and I loved wildlife, and so I grew up hating livestock because of the damage they were doing.

我喜欢野生动物，我从小不喜欢牲畜，因为家畜造成了生态破坏。

And then my university education as an ecologist reinforced my beliefs.

我在大学读生态学的经历也增强了我的信念。

Well, I have news for you. We were once just as certain that the world was flat.

现在，我要告诉你们一些新的东西。我们曾相信世界是平坦的。

We were wrong then, and we are wrong again.

我们那时错了，现在又错了。

And I want to invite you now to come along on my journey of reeducation and discovery.

我想邀请你们来加入我的再教育和探索之旅。

When I was a young man, a young biologist in Africa, I was involved in setting aside marvelous areas as future national parks.

我年轻的时候，是非洲的一个年轻生物学家，我参与了一个项目，为国家公园规划未来的野生区域。

Now no sooner — this was in the 1950s — and no sooner did we remove the hunting,

不久后——这是1950年——我们刚取消打猎，

drum-beating people to protect the animals, than the land began to deteriorate, as you see in this park that we formed.

鼓动人们保护动物，接着土地开始恶化，这是我们建立的公园。

Now, no livestock were involved, but suspecting that we had too many elephants now,

这里并没有牲畜（破坏植被），于是我们怀疑是大象的数量太多了，

I did the research and I proved we had too many,

我做过调查，并得出了大象数量过多的结论，

and I recommended that we would have to reduce their numbers and bring them down to a level that the land could sustain.

我建议应该减少它们的数量，把数量降到土地能承受的水平。

Now, that was a terrible decision for me to have to make, and it was political dynamite, frankly.

对我来说，我不得不承认这个可怕的结论，而坦率地说，这是个政治炸弹。

So our government formed a team of experts to evaluate my research.

所以政府组了一个专家团来评估我的调查结果。

They did. They agreed with me, and over the following years, we shot 40,000 elephants to try to stop the damage.

他们评估之后，也同意我的观点，在接下来的那些年，我们射杀了4万头大象来停止土地退化。

And it got worse, not better.

情形变得更坏了，而不是更好。

Loving elephants as I do, that was the saddest and greatest blunder of my life, and I will carry that to my grave.

我很喜欢大象的，这是我人生中最悲哀的、最大的错误，我会带进坟墓。

One good thing did come out of it. It made me absolutely determined to devote my life to finding solutions.

也有一件好事。它使我下定决心奉献我的一生去寻找解决方案。

When I came to the United States, I got a shock, to find national parks like this one desertifying as badly as anything in Africa.

我来到美国，我大吃一惊，发现美国国家公园竟然是这个样子，荒漠化的程度跟非洲一样糟糕。

And there'd been no livestock on this land for over 70 years.

在这片土地上已经70多年没有牲畜的。

And I found that American scientists had no explanation for this except that it is arid and natural.

我发现美国科学家对此的解释没有什么特别，认为无非是干旱和自然条件导致。

So I then began looking at all the research plots I could over the whole of the Western United States

于是我开始收集和分析，我能找到的整个美国西部所有的野外，

where cattle had been removed to prove that it would stop desertification,

研究站的数据，那些地方的牛群都被移走了，来证明这样会停止荒漠化，

but I found the opposite, as we see on this research station, where this grassland that was green in 1961, by 2002 had changed to that situation.

可是我发现的却相反，看这个研究站，在1961年这片草地是绿的，到2002年变成这种状况。

And the authors of the position paper on climate change from which I obtained these pictures attribute this change to "unknown processes."

这些图片来自于研究气候变化的研究人员的论文，他们在观点论文中这种变化归因为“未知进程”。

Clearly, we have never understood what is causing desertification, which has destroyed many civilizations and now threatens us globally.

显然，我们从未明白什么导致了荒漠化，这种荒漠化已经毁掉了很多的文明社会，而现在对我们的威胁是全球性的。

We have never understood it. Take one square meter of soil and make it bare like this is down here,

我们从来都没有搞清楚过。像这样一平方米的土壤表面像下面这样程度的裸露着，

and I promise you, you will find it much colder at dawn and much hotter at midday than that same piece of ground if it's just covered with litter, plant litter.

我敢说，它会比被植被覆盖的地方，同样的大的地方，黎明的时候会冷得多，中午时会热得多。

You have changed the microclimate.

你已经改变了这个地方的微气候。

Now, by the time you are doing that and increasing greatly the percentage of bare ground on more than half the world's land, you are changing macroclimate.

现在，就像你刚才做的那样，如果世界上裸露的土地的面积快速的增长到超过了世界土地一半以上的面积，大气候就被我们改变了。

But we have just simply not understood why was it beginning to happen 10,000 years ago?

但是我们还是无法理解为什么这个过程一万年前就开始了？

Why has it accelerated lately? We had no understanding of that.

又为什么最近加快了？我们对此无法理解。

What we had failed to understand was that these seasonal humidity environments of the world,

我们过去不了解的是，世界上这些季节性雨水充沛的环境中，

the soil and the vegetation developed with very large numbers of grazing animals,

伴随着植被的蓬勃生长，

and that these grazing animals developed with ferocious pack-hunting predators.

数量可观的游牧食草动物也随之而来，而这些游牧的动物又引来了凶猛的猎食者。

Now, the main defense against pack-hunting predators is to get into herds,

游牧动物防御捕食者的主要方法是群居生活，

and the larger the herd, the safer the individuals.

兽群越大，个体就越安全。

Now, large herds dung and urinate all over their own food,

大量的兽群在自己的食物上大小便，

and they have to keep moving, and it was that movement that prevented the overgrazing of plants,

而它们又必须不断的迁移，这些迁移过程防止了过渡放牧的现象，

while the periodic trampling ensured good cover of the soil, as we see where a herd has passed.

同时定期的踩踏土壤，正如这群动物路过时发生的那样，确保了土壤表面得到了很好的覆盖。

This picture is a typical seasonal grassland.

这张图是典型的季节性草原。

It has just come through four months of rain, and it's now going into eight months of dry season.

刚刚经历了4个月的雨季，将要进入8个月的旱季。

And watch the change as it goes into this long dry season.

注意看草原进入漫长的旱季后的变化。

Now, all of that grass you see aboveground has to decay biologically before the next growing season,

你们看到的所有地表上的草,在下个生长季节到来之前,都会腐烂掉，

and if it doesn't, the grassland and the soil begin to die.

否则的话，草地和土壤就会开始死亡。

Now, if it does not decay biologically, it shifts to oxidation, which is a very slow process,

如果它不是生物性的腐烂，而是以氧化的形式腐烂，这是一个非常缓慢的过程，

and this smothers and kills grasses, leading to a shift to woody vegetation and bare soil, releasing carbon.

并且会消耗氧气，杀死草本植物，只有木本的植物才能生存，导致了地表被裸露，碳元素释放到大气层。

To prevent that, we have traditionally used fire.

为了防止这种情况，传统上我们是用火烧。

But fire also leaves the soil bare, releasing carbon, and worse than that, burning one hectare of grassland gives off more,

可是火也会让地表被裸露，碳元素释放到大气层，更糟糕的是，烧掉一公顷的草地所释放的有害污染物，

and more damaging, pollutants than 6,000 cars.

要比6000辆汽车排放的总和还要多。

And we are burning in Africa, every single year, more than one billion hectares of grasslands, and almost nobody is talking about it.

每年在非洲我们都会烧掉十亿公顷以上的草地，几乎没人关心过这个。

We justify the burning, as scientists, because it does remove the dead material and it allows the plants to grow.

作为科学家，我们理解烧草可以除掉死植物，允许植物成长。

Now, looking at this grassland of ours that has gone dry, what could we do to keep that healthy?

看看这片草地已经枯干，我们做什么才能保持健康？

And bear in mind, I'm talking of most of the world's land now. Okay?

记住，我讲的是世界上大部分的土地。明白么？

We cannot reduce animal numbers to rest it more without causing desertification and climate change.

我们不能用减少动物数量的方式让植被休养，因为这会引发土地荒漠化和气候变化。

We cannot burn it without causing desertification and climate change.

我们不能用焚烧的方法，这也会引发荒漠化和气候变化。

What are we going to do?

那我们能怎么办？

There is only one option, I'll repeat to you, only one option left to climatologists and scientists,

只有一种方案，我再重复一遍，唯一的一种方法摆在气候学家和科学家的面前，

and that is to do the unthinkable, and to use livestock, bunched and moving, as a proxy for former herds and predators, and mimic nature.

个方案非常的不可思议，就是使用牲畜，成群结队地迁移，把它们看作从前的游牧动物和捕食动物，模拟大自然的行为。

There is no other alternative left to mankind.

这这种方法是人类唯一的选择了。

So let's do that. So on this bit of grassland, we'll do it, but just in the foreground.

那就做吧。我们将在这块小草地上实验这种方式。这只是一开始的样子。

We'll impact it very heavily with cattle to mimic nature, and we've done so, and look at that.

我们将会在上面用大量的家畜来模拟大自然的行为，现在来看下模拟之后草地的样子。

All of that grass is now covering the soil as dung, urine and litter or mulch,

现在土壤已经被野草完全的覆盖，上面还有家畜的粪便、尿液、以及其它的覆盖物，

as every one of the gardeners amongst you would understand,

在座的观众如果做过园艺就会明白，

and that soil is ready to absorb and hold the rain, to store carbon, and to break down methane.

这样的土壤已经可以吸收并保存雨水，可以保留住碳元素，并能够分解甲烷。

And we did that, without using fire to damage the soil, and the plants are free to grow.

我们做到了这一点，在没有用火去破坏土壤的前提下，植被也可以自由生长。

When I first realized that we had no option as scientists but to use much-vilified livestock to address climate change and desertification, ok?

当我第一次意识到，我们作为科学家没有别的选择，只有用破坏性强的牲畜来应对气候变化和荒漠化，

I was faced with a real dilemma. How were we to do it?

我面临着真正的困境。我们应该怎么去实现这个目标？

We'd had 10,000 years of extremely knowledgeable pastoralists bunching and moving their animals,

牧民们已经积累了一万年丰富的畜牧经验，知道如何群养和迁徙他们的动物，

but they had created the great manmade deserts of the world.

但是，他们创造了世界上最大的人造沙漠。

Then we'd had 100 years of modern rain science, and that had accelerated desertification,

现代的降雨研究也持续了一百年以上，而这些研究反而加快了荒漠化，

as we first discovered in Africa and then confirmed in the United States,

正如我在非洲首先发现在美国得到证实的那样，

and as you see in this picture of land managed by the federal government.

你们现在看到的图片是联邦政府管理的土地。

Clearly more was needed than bunching and moving the animals,

这些土地需要的显然比起群牧和迁徙更多，

and humans, over thousands of years, had never been able to deal with nature's complexity.

几千年来，我们人类始终无法完全理解大自然的复杂性。

But we biologists and ecologists had never tackled anything as complex as this.

而我们的生物学家和生态学家从来没有尝试解决过这么复杂的事。

So rather than reinvent the wheel, I began studying other professions to see if anybody had.

没有尝试重新发明车轮，而是转向别的科学领域，看看是否有成果可以借鉴。

And I found there were planning techniques that I could take and adapt to our biological need,

我找到了任务规划方面的一些技术，能够满足我们生物学领域的需求，

and from those I developed what we call holistic management and planned grazing, a planning process,

在将这些技术引入生物学的过程中，我们开发了一种称为“整体管理和计划放牧”方法，是一个规划过程，

and that does address all of nature's complexity and our social, environmental, economic complexity.

这个方法设法了解并解决自然的复杂性和我们社会的、环境的、经济的复杂性。

Today, we have young women like this one teaching villages in Africa how to put their animals together into larger herds, plan their grazing to mimic nature,

今天，我们有像这样的年轻女性在非洲的村庄里传授技术，如何把他们的动物集合成一大群，如何安排计划达到模拟大自然的效果，

and where we have them hold their animals overnight -- we run them in a predator-friendly manner,

在哪里让他们的动物过夜——我们用一种对捕食者友好的方法，

because we have a lot of lands, and so on -- and where they do this and hold them overnight to prepare the crop fields,

因为我们有很多土地，它们在哪里模拟大自然，在哪里过夜，

we are getting very great increases in crop yield as well.

我们就在哪里准备庄稼地，我们的庄稼收成也会很好。

Let's look at some results. This is land close to land that we manage in Zimbabwe.

看看这些结果。这块地靠近我们在津巴布韦的土地。

It has just come through four months of very good rains it got that year, and it's going into the long dry season.

刚刚过了四个月的雨水充沛的季节，即将进入漫长的旱季。

But as you can see, all of that rain, almost of all it, has evaporated from the soil surface.

可是你们也会看到，几乎所有的雨水，从土壤表面蒸发掉了。

Their river is dry despite the rain just having ended, ok?

尽管雨停了，河还是干的，

And we have 150,000 people on almost permanent food aid.

我们有15万人口几乎长期依靠食物援助。

Now let's go to our land nearby on the same day, with the same rainfall, and look at that.

看看同一天我们的土地，同样的雨量，看吧。

Our river is flowing and healthy and clean. It's fine.

我们的河水流淌，健康而干净。很好的。

The production of grass, shrubs, trees, wildlife, everything is now more productive,

草、灌木、树木、野生动物等的一切都很高产，

and we have virtually no fear of dry years.

我们一点都不怕干旱年头。

And we did that by increasing the cattle and goats 400 percent,

这样做是通过增加了400%的牛和羊，

planning the grazing to mimic nature and integrate them with all the elephants, buffalo, giraffe and other animals that we have.

有计划的放牧，模拟大自然的过程，跟大象、水牛、长颈鹿以及其它的动物融合一体。

But before we began, our land looked like that.

但在我们开始前，我们的土地是这个样子。

This site was bare and eroding for over 30 years regardless of what rain we got. Okay?

这块地裸露和侵蚀了30多年，不管下多少雨。

Watch the marked tree and see the change as we use livestock to mimic nature.

看看这棵做了标记的树，看看我们用牲畜去模仿自然后的变化。

This was another site where it had been bare and eroding,

这是另一块地，这里也曾裸露和侵蚀，

and at the base of the marked small tree, we had lost over 30 centimeters of soil.

在这棵做了标记的小树底下，我们流失了30厘米的土壤。

Okay? And again, watch the change just using livestock to mimic nature.

对吧？再看一下这个变化，只是使用牲畜去模仿自然。

And there are fallen trees in there now, because the better land is now attracting elephants, etc.

这里有些倒下的树，因为土地变好更吸引大象。

This land in Mexico was in terrible condition,

在墨西哥的这块土地情形很糟，

and I've had to mark the hill because the change is so profound.

我在这个小山上做了标记，因为变化太大了。

I began helping a family in the Karoo Desert in the 1970s turn the desert that you see on the right there back to grassland,

20世纪70年代我开始帮助一个在卡鲁沙漠的家庭，你们看到在右边沙漠变回了草地，

and thankfully, now their grandchildren are on the land with hope for the future.

值得庆幸的是，现在他们的子孙在这片土地上，对未来充满希望。

And look at the amazing change in this one, where that gully has completely healed using nothing but livestock mimicking nature,

看看这个喜人的变化，那里的沟壑已完全愈合，只是用了牧群模仿大自然的过程，

and once more, we have the third generation of that family on that land with their flag still flying.

更可喜的是，第三代人生活在那里，他们的旗帜依旧飞扬。

The vast grasslands of Patagonia are turning to desert as you see here.

巴塔哥尼亚这片辽阔的草原正在变成沙漠。

The man in the middle is an Argentinian researcher,

在中间的那个人是一位阿根廷研究员，

and he has documented the steady decline of that land over the years as they kept reducing sheep numbers.

他已经记录了这片土地的持续衰落，多年来羊群数目持续减少。

They put 25,000 sheep in one flock, really mimicking nature now with planned grazing, ok?

他们把2万5千只羊作为一群，真正模仿大自然的过程并有规划的放牧，

And they have documented a 50-percent increase in the production of the land in the first year.

他们的记录显示，第一年土地的产量有50%的增长。

We now have in the violent Horn of Africa pastoralists planning their grazing to mimic nature

现在在冲突不断的非洲之角（非洲大陆最东的地区）牧民们通过规牧群游牧活动模仿大自然，

and openly saying it is the only hope they have of saving their families and saving their culture.

并公开的表示这是他们唯一的希望，来哺育他们的家人，挽救他们的文化。

Ninety-five percent of that land can only feed people from animals.

这块地的95%的人依靠动物为生。

I remind you that I am talking about most of the world's land here that controls our fate,

我要提醒大家，世界上大部分的土地都是如此，它们掌握着人类的命运，

including the most violent region of the world, where only animals can feed people from about 95 percent of the land.

包括世界最暴力的地区，这些土地上有95%的人以动物作为唯一的食物来源。

What we are doing globally is causing climate change as much as, I believe, fossil fuels, and maybe more than fossil fuels.

这种全球范围的人类行为导致了气候变化，我相信这种原因的重要性至少和化石燃料一样，可能比化石燃料还多。

But worse than that, it is causing hunger, poverty, violence, social breakdown and war,

更糟的是，它引起饥饿、贫困、暴力、社会崩溃和战争，

and as I am talking to you, millions of men, women and children are suffering and dying.

正如我刚才告诉你们的，数以百万计的男人、女人和孩子正在遭受痛苦和死亡。

And if this continues, we are unlikely to be able to stop the climate changing, even after we have eliminated the use of fossil fuels.

如果这种情况持续下去，即使我们停止使用了化石燃料，我们可能也无法阻止气候的改变了。

I believe I've shown you how we can work with nature at very low cost to reverse all this.

我相信我已经向你们展示了我们如何与大自然共处，用很低的成本来扭转这一切。

We are already doing so on about 15 million hectares on five continents,

我们正在全球五大洲，大约1500万公顷的土地上实施这一计划，

and people who understand far more about carbon than I do calculate that, for illustrative purposes,

为了说明这个计划的效果，一些远远比我更了解碳元素的人计算得到了一些结论，

if we do what I am showing you here, we can take enough carbon out of the atmosphere and safely store it in the grassland soils for thousands of years,

如果我们按照这样去做，我们就能减少大气层中足够多的碳（CO2），将它们安全的储存于草地土壤中，达千年之久，

and if we just do that on about half the world's grasslands that I've shown you,

如果全球一半的草地都实施我刚才说的方法，

we can take us back to pre-industrial levels, while feeding people.

我们就能（把二氧化碳）控制到工业化之前的水平，并能养活全球的人口。

I can think of almost nothing that offers more hope for our planet, for your children, and their children, and all of humanity.

我几乎想不出任何事，能给我们的地球，你们的孩子和孩子们的孩子，以及整个人类提供更大的希望。

Thank you, Chris.

谢谢，克里斯。

Thank you. Thank you. I have, and I'm sure everyone here has, A) a hundred questions, B) wants to hug you.

谢谢。谢谢。我相信这里的每个人，包括我在内，都有好多问题想问，并且想要拥抱你一下。

I'm just going to ask you one quick question.

我只问个简单问题。

When you first start this and you bring in a flock of animals, it's desert.

当你开始这个实验的时候，把一大群动物引进来，但这是沙漠。

What do they eat? How does that part work? How do you start?

他们吃什么？这个问题怎么解决的？你如何开始？

Well, we have done this for a long time, and the only time we have ever had to provide any feed is during mine reclamation, where it's 100 percent bare.

我们已经做了很长时间，只有一次我们必须提供吃的是矿山复垦期间，那里是百分之百的没有任何植被。

But many years ago, we took the worst land in Zimbabwe,

很多年前，我们得到一块津巴布韦最差的土地，

where I offered a ￡5 note in a hundred-mile drive if somebody could find one grass in a hundred-mile drive,

当时我出5英镑打赌，没人能在一百英里的驾程范围内找到一根草，

and on that, we trebled the stocking rate, the number of animals, in the first year with no feeding, just by the movement, mimicking nature,

在一百英里的驾程范围，我们把动物的数量增加了三倍，第一年没有提供食物，只靠迁徙，模仿自然，

and using a sigmoid curve, that principle.

使用（统计学上的）S型曲线的原理。

It's a little bit technical to explain here, but just that.

要解释清楚就要一些技术基础，总之就是这个样子。

Well, I would love to -- I mean, this such an interesting and important idea.