墨尔本PTE素材库——Elephant Ivory DNA Reveals Poaching Hotspots

墨尔本PTE素材库——Elephant Ivory DNA Reveals Poaching Hotspots

中文批注

这篇文章的主要内容，是关于象牙的非法走私。基本上现如今每年都有5万头的大象被斩杀，目前在非洲，也仅存45万头大象了。生物学家发现，其实这是有一个比较庞大的犯罪集团，在做象牙走私的相关犯罪活动。

澳大利亚语言学院会定期整理一些PTE的素材库，旨在用这些与Question Criteria高度契合的素材，让大家在平日复习的时候有题可练，有素材可学习。光靠PTE官方所给出的那些复习材料，想要大幅度的提升自身英语水平，其实是远远不够的。譬如这段音频，大家可以拿来做re-tell lecture，难度中等，比较适合目标分数再65-79的同学加以尝试。如果发现有一些生词没有听懂，没有关系，之后可以查阅full transcript和列出的key vocabulary加以学习。一天1-2篇，相信没过多久，你的英语知识+英语水平都会有较大程度的提升。

那么，听完整段音频的同学，来尝试回答以下问题：

• 专家们是如何侦测走私活动的？
• 前十年，象牙大都是出自哪里？
• Tridem具体是哪个地方？

回答不出，或者只能回答部分的同学，可以学习一下full transcript哦！

【key vocabulary】

Stockpile: 库存，积蓄

Enforcement: 执行，实施，强制

Originate: 引起，创作

Complexity: 复杂，复杂性，错综复杂的事物

Transnational: 跨国的

Sophisticated: 复杂的，精致的

Entity：实体，存在

Contraband: 走私，走私货

Ivory: 象牙，乳白色

Seizure: 没收，夺取，捕获

Syndicate: 联合，财团

Tridem: 三联轴

Gabon: 加蓬，非洲中西部国家

Congo: 刚果，非洲中部国家

Savannah: 大草原

Kingpin: 中心立轴，主要人物

Full Transcript

Almost all the ivory in large stockpiles seized by law enforcement originates in just two locations in Africa, informing authorities about where to focus their resources.

“There are about 50,000 elephants a year being killed right now with only about 450,000 left in Africa.”

Samuel Wasser, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington.

“And one of the complexities of this problem is dealing with this transnational organized crime, where you have these sophisticated networks of criminal entities that are experts at moving contraband from one place to another without it being detected.”

Wasser spoke February 14th at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.

“What we have done is we’ve tried to focus our attention using genetics to determine the source of the actual poaching and to figure out how many major source populations are there. Because in doing that you can potentially focus law enforcement on those areas…

“Now the way that we focus on this work is we use DNA from large ivory seizures…worth a minimum of a million dollars…and that is the seizures that bear the signature of large organized crime syndicates…

“The work we published in Science last July showed that virtually 100 percent of all large ivory seizures that we analyzed in the last decade came from really just two locations. Twenty-two percent of the ivory was made up of forest elephant ivory, and that came from an area we call the Tridem, which is the northeast corner of Gabon and northwest corner of Congo. And 78 percent of the ivory was savannah ivory, and that all came from Tanzania and the areas just bordering Tanzania. So Tanzania clearly is the biggest hotspot that we have encountered in this trade…

[S.K. Wasser et al, Genetic assignment of large seizures of elephant ivory reveals Africa’s major poaching hotspots]

“One of the things that this suggests is that the number of kingpins driving this trade are relatively few because so much of this big trade is focused in one area…

“Our work has already brought down one of the largest ivory dealers in West Africa. We are now hot on the trail of probably the largest ivory dealer in Africa.”

—Steve Mirsky

(Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/elephant-ivory-dna-reveals-poaching-hotspots/)