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Public lands in the U.S. are managed with two goals in mind: protecting biodiversity and providing people with recreational opportunities, a chance to connect with nature. But sometimes those two goals are at odds—especially if recreation, activities like hiking or hunting, disrupts wild animals enough to alter their use of those landscapes.

在美国，公共土地管理有两个目标：一是保护生物多样性，二是为人们提供娱乐的机会，一个接近大自然的机会。但有时这两个目标并不一致，尤其是像徒步活动或打猎这样的娱乐、活动，如果对野生动物造成破坏，足以改变他们对这些景观的使用。

Indeed, several years ago, a study done in California found that hikers had a negative impact on wildlife.

事实上，几年前，在加利福尼亚的一项研究发现，徒步旅行者会对野生动物产生负面影响。

"That kind of sounded a bit of an alarm to us as wildlife biologists and as people who like to go hiking ourselves."

这似乎为我们敲响警钟，作为野生动物生物学家和喜欢去徒步旅行的人们。

Wildlife biologist Roland Kays, of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and N.C. State University.

北卡罗来纳自然科学博物馆和北卡罗来纳州州立大学的野生动物生物学家罗兰·凯斯。

"We were pretty worried that if this problem was as bad as it seemed from that study, and was widespread, then there could be a real conflict between outdoor recreation and wildlife conservation."

他表示：“我们非常担心，如果这个问题像研究发现的那样严重、普遍，那么有可能在户外休闲和野生动物保护之间存在真正的冲突。”

To find out, Kays and his team enlisted¹ the help of more than 350 volunteer citizen scientists, who deployed² camera traps at nearly 2,000 sites within 32 protected areas in six different states. Roughly half of the areas allowed hunting and half did not. What they discovered was something of a relief.

为了找到答案，凯斯和他的团队招募了350多名公民科学家志愿者，在他们的帮助下，在六个不同州的32个保护区部署相机“陷阱”，将近2000处。大约一半的地区允许狩猎，另一半则不允许。他们所发现的使人顿然解惑。

"We found relatively³ minor⁴ impacts of hunting and hiking on wildlife."

“我们发现狩猎和徒步旅行对野生动物的影响相对较小。“

It's not that human activities didn't impact wildlife at all of course. Heavily hunted species, like white-tailed deer, grey squirrels, and raccoons, were photographed somewhat less often in hunted areas. Coyotes showed up more often in hunted areas. While most species didn't avoid hiking trails, the predators⁵ actually preferred them.

这并不是说人类活动对野生动物没有任何影响。大量被捕杀的物种，如白尾鹿、灰松鼠和浣熊，在狩猎地区极少被拍摄到。土狼在狩猎地区经常出现。然而大多数物种没有选择回避徒步旅行的小径，但捕食者实际上更喜欢它们。

But they did find something that had a much bigger impact on wildlife: habitat quality. The best predictor of wildlife abundance was not human activity, but factors like forest connectivity, nearby housing density⁶, and the amount of adjacent agriculture. The results were published in the Journal of Applied⁷ Ecology. [Roland Kays et al., Does hunting or hiking affect wildlife communities in protected areas?]

但他们确实发现对野生动物产生更大影响的因素：栖息地的质量。野生动物丰富的最佳预报器并不是人类活动，而是森林的连通性、附近房屋密度以及相邻农业的数量。这一研究结果刊登在《应用生态学期刊》上。

And they suggest that outdoor recreation, a 646-billion-dollar industry in the U.S., is currently managed in a sustainable way, but also that protecting the scattered⁸ patches of wild habitat that remain in the U.S. is vital—both for wildlife and for people.

并且他们建议，户外休闲，作为美国一项价值6亿4600万的产业，目前应以可持续的方式进行管理。无论是对野生动物还是对人类而言，保护美国零散的野生栖息地是至关重要的。

"Recreation, including hunting and hiking, and wildlife conservation, can coexist in the same place at the same time, and we can go out there and enjoy nature, enjoy the woods, hope to catch a glimpse of wildlife, without worrying about hurting the populations in the process."

“娱乐，包括狩猎和徒步旅行，可以与野生动物保护在同一时间同一个地方共存。并且我们可以走出去，享受自然，走进森林，希望看到野生动物而不用担心在这一过程中人群受到伤害。”