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Can Australia find a way to protect its most beloved animal?
澳大利亚能否想办法保护其最受喜爱的动物？
Ten-month-old Emerson fixed his big brown eyes on me and yawned. Still groggy from a nap, the koala rubbed his face, then stuck out an expectant paw.
10个月大的爱默生睁着棕色的大眼睛盯着我，然后打了个哈欠。他刚睡醒午觉，还一脸惺忪，他揉了揉脸，然后伸出一只期待的小爪子。
The nurse escorting me through his enclosure smiled. “He’s looking for his milk,” she said.
护送我穿过考拉园区围栏的护士笑了。她说：“他在找他的牛奶。”
Four months earlier, when Emerson was admitted to Northern Rivers Koala Hospital, in New South Wales, Australia, he was so small that volunteers had to feed him with a syringe, dribbling formula into his mouth, his furry body swaddled in a towel.
四个月前，当爱默生在澳大利亚新南威尔士州的北河考拉医院入院治疗时，他还很小，志愿者们不得不用注射器给他喂食，将配方奶滴进他的嘴里，他那毛茸茸的身体裹在一条毛巾里。
Now healthy and about five pounds, he was one of the most effortlessly anthropomorphized animals I had ever come across.
现在他很健康，大约有五磅重，是我见过的最容易被拟人化的动物之一。
“The first thing I tell my volunteers when they come here to start is: ‘You will not be cuddling these koalas,’” Jen Ridolfi, the volunteer coordinator for Friends of the Koala, the nonprofit that runs Northern Rivers, told me.
“志愿者们来这里开始工作时，我告诉他们的第一件事就是：‘你们不能抱这些考拉。’”非营利组织考拉之友的志愿者协调员珍·里多尔菲告诉我，这个组织负责运营北河考拉医院。
Ridolfi is vigilant about volunteers for a reason. Of the roughly 350 koalas admitted annually to Northern Rivers, only about a third survive.
里多尔菲对志愿者保持警觉是有原因的。在北河医院每年入院的大约350只考拉中，只有约三分之一存活下来。
Chief among the threats they face is chlamydia—yes, that chlamydia—a bacterial infection that in koalas, as in humans, spreads primarily via sex, and can cause blindness, infertility, and other severe, sometimes fatal complications.
它们面临的主要威胁是衣原体--是的，就是衣原体，这是一种细菌感染，在考拉和人体内都是主要通过性传播，可导致失明、不育和其他严重的并发症，有时甚至致命。
Car collisions and dog attacks are not far behind.
被汽车撞和被狗袭击也是紧随其后的威胁。
These acute perils are compounded by more chronic ones: habitat destruction; genetic fragility; and climate change, which fuels heat waves, droughts, and wildfires that scorch the trees that koalas live in and eat from.
这些紧急的危险又叠加了更长期的危险：栖息地破坏、基因脆弱性，以及气候变化，后者助长了热浪、干旱和野火，烧焦了考拉生活和觅食的树木。
Some koala populations have, in recent decades, fallen by 80 percent. Koalas are far from Australia’s most endangered animal—they’re not even its most endangered marsupial. But if there’s any creature that people are motivated to save, it’s the koala.
在最近几十年里，一些考拉种群减少了80%。考拉远非澳大利亚最濒危的动物，甚至也不是澳大利亚最濒危的有袋动物。但是，如果说有什么动物是人们有动力去拯救的，那就是考拉。
Since 2019, the Australian government has dedicated the equivalent of about 50 million U.S. dollars to conserving the species, far more than it has allocated to animals in greater peril.
自2019年以来，澳大利亚政府已投入相当于约5000万美元的资金用于保护该物种，远远超过了分配给其他更濒危动物的资金。
Koalas are a national icon and, like many other charismatic megafauna, a boom for tourism. Plus people just seem to connect with them in a way they do with few other animals.
考拉是澳大利亚的国宝，并且和许多其他有魅力的大型动物一样，也是受欢迎的旅游项目。另外，人们似乎与它们有一种与其他动物没有的联系。
But the places where koalas prefer to live --- lush, coastal regions --- are also the places that human beings find most hospitable. Which means that even an animal this beloved may test the limits of what people are willing to sacrifice to save another species.
但是考拉喜欢生活的地方--- 郁郁葱葱的沿海地区---也是人类觉得最舒适的地方。这意味着，即使是这种受人喜爱的动物，也可能考验人们为拯救另一个物种而愿意做出多大的牺牲。
