经济学人下载:乌龟的烦恼(2)

In all, 25 of the decoys were poached. They told different stories. Some travelled just a few kilometres, with one ending up at a bar 2km away from the nest it was taken from, where its signal abruptly ended. Others went quite a distance. One, for example, was carried 137km inland, to a supermarket loading bay, before transmitting its final signal from a residential property nearby. 

被偷的“假蛋”共25枚，它们分别诉说了不同的故事。有的仅被带离几公里之外，还有一枚在距离被偷巢穴2公里的一家酒吧内突然销声匿迹。其它的则被带到了较远的地区，比如其中一枚“假蛋”被带到了137公里外的内陆，到了一家超市的装货间，最后在超市附近的一个小区里发出了最后的信号。

The most curious tale, though, was told by a decoy that ended up in Cariari, a town 43km from the beach where it had been deployed. To their surprise, the researchers were sent photographs of this particular device by members of a local turtle-monitoring project. This group had been contacted by the egg's purchaser, who was happy to volunteer where he had bought it—indicating either that he did not understand that the trade was illegal, or that he didn't care. 

其中最离奇的一段故事来自一枚最后被带到了卡里阿里(Cariari)的“假蛋”，卡里阿里是一处距离被盗巢穴43公里的小镇。令研究人员惊讶的是，他们从当地的海龟监测项目成员那里收到了该特殊装置的照片。该海龟蛋买家已经联系了小组，他很乐意告诉大家自己在哪里买的鸡蛋，这表明他不知道这种交易是非法的，或者说他不在乎

To make sure that they, themselves, were not harming what they were intending to protect, the researchers monitored all of the decoy-laden nests which had survived the attentions of poachers and compared these nests' outputs of hatchlings with those of 44 other surviving nests that had no decoy in them. Both sorts of nest had the same hatching rates, suggesting that adding a decoy did not affect the development of the eggs it was hidden among. 

为了确保他们没有伤及他们自己想要保护的对象，研究人员检测了所有未引起偷蛋者注意的装有“假蛋”的巢穴，并将这些巢穴内孵化的小乌龟和其它44个里面没有“假蛋”的未遭偷盗的巢穴内孵出的小乌龟进行了对比，结果显示这两种巢穴内的孵化率是一样的。这说明把“假蛋”混着放在真蛋里并未影响真蛋的发育。

Given the success of their project, Dr Williams-Guillén and Dr Pheasey propose that the idea should be used more widely for turtles. They also suggest that similar decoys might help protect the eggs of other endangered reptiles—and birds—that are collected and traded illegally. 

鉴于项目的成功，金·威廉斯吉伦博士和菲西博士提议将该想法广泛应用于帮助乌龟。同时他们建议，类似“假蛋”或可用于帮助避免其他面临威胁的爬行动物——及鸟类——的蛋被收集和非法交易。