第1段

There is a poem, written around 598 AD, which describes hunting a mystery animal called a llewyn. But what was it? Nothing seemed to fit, until 2006, when an animal bone, dating from around the same period, was found in the Kinsey Cave in northern England. Until this discovery, the lynx — a large spotted cat with tasselled ears — was presumed to have died out in Britain at least 6,000 years ago, before the inhabitants of these islands took up farming. But the 2006 find, together with three others in Yorkshire and Scotland, is compelling evidence that the lynx and the mysterious llewyn were in fact one and the same animal. If this is so, it would bring forward the tassel-eared cat’s estimated extinction date by roughly 5,000 years.

有一首诗，大约写于公元598年，描述了追猎一种名为llewyn的神秘动物。但是它到底是什么呢？直到2006年，当时在英国北部的金斯洞穴发现了一块可追溯到同一时期的动物骨头，一切才有了答案。在这次发现之前，认为豹猫（一种带斑点的大型猫科动物）在英国至少在6,000年前就灭绝了，也就是这些岛屿的居民开始耕种之前。但是2006年的这次发现，以及在约克郡和苏格兰发现的其他三个动物骨头，都是豹猫和神秘的llewyn实际上是同一个动物的有力证据。如果是这样的话，那么这种长满睫毛的猫的灭绝时间将提前大约5,000年。

第2段

However, this is not quite the last glimpse of the animal in British culture. A 9th-century stone cross from the Isle of Eigg shows, alongside the deer, boar and aurochs pursued by a mounted hunter, a speckled cat with tasselled ears. Were it not for the animal’s backside having worn away with time, we could have been certain, as the lynx’s stubby tail is unmistakable. But even without this key feature, it’s hard to see what else the creature could have been. The lynx is now becoming the totemic animal of a movement that is transforming British environmentalism: rewilding.

然而，这并不是英国文化中对这种动物的最后一瞥。艾格岛上的一座9世纪石十字架上显示着一个带着斑点的长满睫毛的猫，旁边还有一只被骑马猎人追赶的鹿、野猪和野牛。如果不是因为动物的背部被时间磨损掉了，我们可以确定，因为豹猫的短尾巴是不会被误认的。但即使没有这个关键特征，很难看出这个生物还能是什么。豹猫现在正成为改变英国环境主义的象征性动物：复原。

第3段

Rewilding means the mass restoration of damaged ecosystems. It involves letting trees return to places that have been denuded, allowing parts of the seabed to recover from trawling and dredging, permitting rivers to flow freely again. Above all, it means bringing back missing species. One of the most striking findings of modern ecology is that ecosystems without large predators behave in completely different ways from those that retain them. Some of them drive dynamic processes that resonate through the whole food chain, creating niches for hundreds of species that might otherwise struggle to survive. The killers turn out to be bringers of life.

复原意味着大规模修复受损生态系统。它涉及到让树木重新长回失去植被的地方，让海底的一部分从拖网和挖掘中恢复过来，允许河流再次自由流动。最重要的是，它意味着恢复消失的物种。现代生态学的一个最引人注目的发现之一是，没有大型捕食者的生态系统与保留有大型捕食者的生态系统行为完全不同。它们中的一些会驱动整个食物链的动态过程，为数以百计的物种创造生存的生态位。这些杀手们原来是生命的带来者。

第4段

Such findings present a big challenge to British conservation, which has often selected arbitrary assemblages of plants and animals and sought, at great effort and expense, to prevent them from changing. It has tried to preserve the living world as if it were a jar of pickles, letting nothing in and nothing out, keeping nature in a state of arrested development. But ecosystems are not merely collections of species; they are also the dynamic and ever-shifting relationships between them. And this dynamism often depends on large predators.

这些发现对英国保护工作提出了巨大挑战，英国保护工作经常选择任意的植物和动物组合，并努力以巨大的努力和费用阻止它们的变化。它试图保护生物世界，就像保护一罐腌菜一样，不让任何东西进入，也不让任何东西出去，让自然界处于停滞发展的状态。但生态系统不仅仅是物种的集合，它们还是彼此之间动态而不断变化的关系。而这种动态常常依赖于大型捕食者。

第5段

At sea the potential is even greater: by protecting large areas from commercial fishing, we could once more see what 18th-century literature describes: vast shoals of fish being chased by fin and sperm whales, within sight of the English shore. This policy would also greatly boost catches in the surrounding seas; the fishing industry’s insistence on scouring every inch of seabed, leaving no breeding reserves, could not be more damaging to its own interests.

在海上，潜力更大：通过保护大面积的海域不进行商业捕鱼，我们可以再次看到18世纪文学中描绘的景象：庞大的鱼群被须鲸和抹香鲸追逐，离英国海岸不远。这一政策也将极大地提高周边海域的捕捞量；渔业行业坚持清理海床的每一寸，不留繁殖区，对自身利益造成的破坏更加严重。

第6段

Rewilding is a rare example of an environmental movement in which campaigners articulate what they are for rather than only what they are against. One of the reasons why the enthusiasm for rewilding is spreading so quickly in Britain is that it helps to create a more inspiring vision than the green movement’s usual promise of ‘Follow us and the world will be slightly less awful than it would otherwise have been’.

复原是一个罕见的环境运动的例子，其中活动家表达了他们所支持的而不仅仅是他们所反对的。复原在英国迅速传播的原因之一是它能够营造出比绿色运动通常承诺的“跟着我们，世界会比原本要好一点点”的更具启发性的愿景。

第7段

The lynx presents no threat to human beings: there is no known instance of one preying on people. It is a specialist predator of roe deer, a species that has exploded in Britain in recent decades, holding back, by intensive browsing, attempts to re-establish forests. It will also winkle out sika deer: an exotic species that is almost impossible for human beings to control, as it hides in impenetrable plantations of young trees. The attempt to reintroduce this predator marries well with the aim of bringing forests back to parts of our bare and barren uplands. The lynx requires deep cover, and as such presents little risk to sheep and other livestock, which are supposed, as a condition of farm subsidies, to be kept out of the woods.

豹猫对人类没有威胁：没有已知的豹猫袭击人类的例子。它是对鹿的专门捕食者，而鹿在英国近几十年来数量激增，通过密集的采食阻碍了森林的重新建立。它还会找到梅花鹿：一种对人类几乎无法控制的外来物种，因为它隐藏在无法穿透的年轻树林中。重新引入这种捕食者与将森林带回我们的贫瘠山地的目标相符。豹猫需要深厚的掩护，因此对绵羊和其他牲畜几乎没有风险，因为作为农场补贴的条件，它们应该被远离森林。

第8段

On a recent trip to the Cairngorm Mountains, I heard several conservationists suggest that the lynx could be reintroduced there within 20 years. If trees return to the bare hills elsewhere in Britain, the big cats could soon follow. There is nothing extraordinary about these proposals, seen from the perspective of anywhere else in Europe. The lynx has now been reintroduced to the Jura Mountains, the Alps, the Vosges in eastern France and the Harz mountains in Germany, and has re-established itself in many more places. The European population has tripled since 1970 to roughly 10,000. As with wolves, bears, beavers, boar, bison, moose and many other species, the lynx has been able to spread as farming has left the hills and people discover that it is more lucrative to protect charismatic Wildlife than to hunt it, as tourists will pay for the chance to see it. Large-scale rewilding is happening almost everywhere — except Britain.

最近我在凯尔恩戈姆山区的一次旅行中，听到几位保护主义者建议在20年内在那里重新引入豹猫。如果其他地方的荒山上重新长满了树木，大型猫科动物很快就会跟随。从欧洲其他地方的视角来看，这些提议并没有什么特别之处。豹猫现已被重新引入侏罗山脉、阿尔卑斯山、法国东部的沃兹山和德国的哈尔茨山，并在许多其他地方重新建立了栖息地。自1970年以来，欧洲豹猫的数量增长了两倍，约为10,000只。与狼、熊、河狸、野猪、野牛、驼鹿和许多其他物种一样，豹猫能够在农业离开山地的情况下扩散开来，人们发现保护魅力动物比狩猎它们更有利可图，因为游客愿意为看到它们的机会付费。大规模复原几乎在任何地方都在进行，只有英国例外。

第9段

Here, attitudes are just beginning to change. Conservationists are starting to accept that the old preservation-jar model is failing, even on its own terms. Already, projects such as Trees for Life in the Highlands provide a hint of what might be coming. An organisation is being set up that will seek to catalyse the rewilding of land and sea across Britain, its aim being to reintroduce that rarest of species to British ecosystem: hope.