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Old Trees Are Ecosystem¹ Gold

“Well, lots of people recognize that as humans get older they tend to have less and less children...trees do it the other way around.”David Lindenmayer. He studies conservation, landscape ecology and biodiversity at the Australian National University College of Science in Canberra. On January 26th he spoke² to Scientific American Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina when they were both at the World Economic Forum³ in Davos.

“好吧，很多人都认识到，随着人类年龄的增长，他们的孩子越来越少......树木则是相反的。”David Lindenmayer说。他在堪培拉的澳大利亚国立大学科学学院学习保护景观生态学和生物多样性。1月26日，当他们在达沃斯世界经济论坛上时，他与美国科学杂志主编Mariette DiChristina交谈。

DL: “What happens is that the older some of these really big old trees get, the more seeds they produce and the more germinants they’re likely to have. So it’s actually the polar opposite of what we see with humans and most other animals, so really quite extraordinary.”Mariette DiChristina: “And how about the number of older trees that we have today, how does that look?”

DL: “It’s quite a distressing⁴ situation, because in many, many forests and woodland and other ecosystems⁵ around the world, populations of large old trees are declining⁶ very, very quickly. And this matters because a lot of biodiversity, a lot of carbon, a lot of key ecosystem processes are associated with those really big, old trees.”

DL：“现在所发生的事情是，这些真正的老树发挥了作用，他们生产的种子越多，他们可能拥有的萌芽就越多。所以它实际上与我们在人类和大多数其他动物中看到的情况是相反的，这非同一般。“Mariette DiChristina：”今天我们拥有的老树的数量如何，看起来如何?“DL：”这是相当令人痛心的情况，因为在世界各地许多森林和其他生态系统中，大型古树的种群数量正在迅速下降。这很重要，因为很多生物多样性，大量的碳，许多关键性的生态系统过程与那些真正的大树，古树相关联。

MD: “Is there something we can do about this?”DL: “Absolutely there is. We can make sure we grow more forest, we can make sure we protect the big trees that we have now, and we can make sure that we don’t do things that really put a lot of pressure on those trees. Straight out, just cutting them down—we should not be cutting down really big, old trees anymore.”

MD：“我们能做些什么呢?”DL：“绝对有所作为的地方。我们可以确保我们养护更多的森林，我们可以确保，保护我们现在拥有的大树，并且我们可以确保不会对那些树木施加很大的压力。我们不应该再砍掉真正的大树，老树了。