There is a poem, written around 598 AD, which describes hunting a mystery animal called a llewyn. 一首创作于公元598年的诗歌曾经描述了人们猎杀一种神秘动物的场景，这是一个名为llewyn的物种。 But what was it? 然而，它是什么动物？ 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. 人们找不到参照物，直到2006年，人们在英格兰北部的金赛洞穴（Kinsey Cave）中发现一根同时期的动物骸骨。 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. 在这之前，猞猁(即山猫)--有着高耸的耳朵的大型斑点猫-被认为早已在至少6000年前就已在英国灭绝，在岛民们(岛民指英国人)从事农业之前（而那时农业耕作活动还并未出现在英国各岛）。 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. 但06年的这一发现，连同在约克夏和苏格兰的其他三个发现，提供了强有力的证据，证明猞猁和神秘的llewyn其实是同一物种。 If this is so, it would bring forward the tassel-eared cat's estimated extinction date by roughly 5,000 years. 若真是如此，猞猁的预估灭绝时间将往后推大约5000年。

However, this is not quite the last glimpse of the animal in British culture. 然而，猞猁在英国文明留下的足迹不止这一处。 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. 在苏格兰埃格岛 (内赫布里底群岛)上，一块九世纪的十字石碑上就出现了一只尖耳朵的斑点猫，连同野鹿，野猪以及欧洲野牛，被一位骑马猎手追逐。 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. 要不是因为年代久远磨灭了这只动物的屁股(【石碑上】这只动物的背部因着时间流逝而磨损)，我们几乎可以确定这就是猞猁，因为其粗短的尾巴是如此独一无二。 But even without this key feature, it’s hard to see what else the creature could have been. 但即使没有这一关键外形特征，也很难说这还能是什么其他的动物。 The lynx is now becoming the totemic animal of a movement that is transforming British environmentalism: rewilding. 再野生化，这项运动正在改造英国的环境主义，而现在，山猫成为了改变英国环境主义的“再野生化”活动的标志性动物。

Rewilding means the mass restoration of damaged ecosystems. 再野生化意即对受损生态系统的大规模修复。 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. 它包括把树木种回被伐光的森林（重新植树造林），让海床从拖网和挖掘中恢复，让河流再次自由流动。 Above all, it means bringing back missing species. 事实上，再野生化指的是让正在消失的物种重新出现。 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. 现代生态学最惊人的发现之一是，生态系统中大型捕猎者的存在对生态系统的表现和状态有着巨大影响。 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. 大型猎食者充满活力的活动对整个食物链产生了重要的影响，为数以百计原本为生存而挣扎的物种提供了生存空间。 The killers turn out to be bringers of life. 于是这些杀手们，带来的并非死亡而是生机。

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. 类似的发现，对英国环境保护来说无疑是一个挑战，因为这些发现经常随意地选取一些植物和动物组合，且不遗余力地，阻止这些组合产生变化。 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. 他们(英国环境保护)试图去保存这个活生生的世界，就像保存一瓶腌黄瓜那样，不让任何物种进出，让自然在控制下去发展（在局限中发展）。 But ecosystems are not merely collections of species; they are also the dynamic and ever-shifting relationships between them. 但生态系统并不只是物种的集合，其还包括了物种之间的互动和不断转变的关系。 And this dynamism often depends on large predators. 这种生态活力活跃与否，取决于大型捕猎者。

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. 在海洋生态系统中，这一潜能更加巨大：通过禁止商业捕鱼来保护大片海洋，我们得以再次目睹18世纪文学作品中所描述的景象：在英格兰海岸上，成群的鱼群受到鲨鱼和抹香鲸的追逐。 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. 这一政策也将极大地提升附近海域的捕鱼量，而捕鱼业搜刮每一寸海床，竭泽而渔的政策才是对自身行业的极大损害。

Rewilding is a rare example of an environmental movement in which campaigners articulate what they are for rather than only what they are against. 再野生化是一项非常罕见的环保运动，因为相较于对某些行为提出反对，该活动的参与者更加清楚自身行为的目的。 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'. 再野生化能够迅速在英国传播的原因之一，是其为人们创造了一个更振奋人心的愿景，而非像普通的绿色活动所提出的“追随我们，这个世界将会从糟糕的状态变好一点点”类似承诺。

The lynx presents no threat to human beings: there is no known instance of one preying on people. 猞猁对人类没有威胁：没有他们捕猎人类的先例。 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. 猞猁是狍子捕猎专家，而近几十年，狍子在英国的数量剧增，它们大量地嚼食植物，破坏了人们植树还林的企图。 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. 猞猁也能追踪梅花鹿，这是一个人类几乎无法控制的外来物种，因为其通常藏身于难以穿越的小树林之中。 The attempt to reintroduce this predator marries well with the aim of bringing forests back to parts of our bare and barren uplands. 重新引进猞猁，与把森林带回部分贫瘠的高地的目标不谋而合。 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. 猞猁需要密林作为掩护，因此对于绵羊和其他牲畜几乎没有威胁，作为农业补贴的一个条件，这些牲畜将远离树林。

On a recent trip to the Cairngorm Mountains, I heard several conservationists suggest that the lynx could be reintroduced there within 20 years. 在最近去Cairngorm山的时候，几个环境保护主义者向我透露，猞猁将会在20年内重返这片山林。 If trees return to the bare hills elsewhere in Britain, the big cats could soon follow. 如果英国其他地区那些赤裸的山丘能够重新长满草木，猞猁也会回到那里。 There is nothing extraordinary about these proposals, seen from the perspective of anywhere else in Europe. 这些提议与欧洲其他地区的观点相比并无特殊之处。 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. 猞猁已经被重新引进在Jura山，阿尔卑斯山，法国东部的Vosges山，以及德国的Harz山，和其他很多地方。 The European population has tripled since 1970 to roughly 10,000. 1970年起，欧洲地区的猞猁数量增长了三倍，近1万只。 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. 如同狼，熊，海狸，野猪，野牛，麋鹿等其他物种一样，猞猁数量之所以能够增长，是因为农业活动远离了山林，人们发现，保护代表性野生动物比捕猎它们，更加有利可图，游客们为一睹其真容愿意掏出自己的钱包。 Large-scale rewilding is happening almost everywhere — except Britain. 除了英国，各国也都在进行大范围的再野生化。

Here, attitudes are just beginning to change. 在英国，人们的态度也正开始转变。 Conservationists are starting to accept that the old preservation-jar model is failing, even on its own terms. 环境保护主义者开始接受腌黄瓜模式的失败，即使按其自身的标准。 Already, projects such as Trees for Life in the Highlands provide a hint of what might be coming. 比如像在Highlands的 Trees for Life项目预示着即将到来的更多活动。 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. 目前，相关机构正在筹建当中，并将致力于促进英国陆地和海洋的再野生化，其目的是为英国生态系统带回最稀有的物种：希望。