023《经济学家》读译参考之二十三：为救一只啄木鸟-阿肯色农业面临两难困境.doc

TEXT 23 To save a woodpecker 为了救一只啄木鸟 May 11th 2006 | CLARENDON, ARKANSAS From The Economist print edition THE ivory-billed woodpecker is not large, as birds go. It is about the size of a crow, but flashier. Its claim to fame[1] is that, though it had been thought e_________（A） since 1944, a lone kayaker spotted it about two years ago, flying around among the cypress trees in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge. And （1）that sighting may prove the death-blow[2] to a $319m irrigation project in the Arkansas corner of the Delta. 象牙喙啄木鸟与普通的鸟一样，体形不是很大，跟乌鸦差不多，但羽色较亮。1944年以来人们一直以为它已经灭绝，但大约两年前，一个划着小船的独行客在凯奇河国家野生物保护区的柏树林中发现一只啄木鸟正在四处飞翔，因此，这种鸟就出了名。而且，这一发现可能致使阿肯色三角洲地区一项耗资3.19亿美元的灌溉工程搁浅。 The Grand Prairie Area Demonstration Project seemed, at first, a fine idea. The Grand Prairie is the fourth-largest rice-bowl in the world, with 363,000 acres under paddies. But it is running out of water, with farmers driving wells deeper and deeper into the underlying aquifer[3]. The new project, dreamed up around a decade ago, would tap excess water from the White river when it f_________（B） and pump it, at the rate of about one billion gallons a day, to storage tanks on around 1,000 rice farms. 此项北美大草原地区示范工程一开始似乎是个好主意。大草原是世界上第四大稻米产地，拥有36.3万亩稻田。但是那里水资源正日趋枯竭，农民的井越挖越深，已经到了地下蓄水层。大概十年前人们就梦想有这样一项新的工程，能在怀特河发生洪灾时对上涨的河水进行引流，并以每天10亿加仑的流量将其抽入大约1000个水稻农场的蓄水池中。 U_________（C）, it would also divert water from the region's huge, swampy wildlife refuges, home to black bears and alligators and the pallid sturgeon. Tiny swamp towns like Clarendon and Brinkley, which are heavily black and almost destitute[4], rely on nature tourism for the little economic activity they have. In Brinkley, （2）the barber offers an “ivorybill” haircut that makes you look like one. 可不幸的是，这一工程同样会排走当地野生物保护区庞大的沼泽地里（黑熊、鳄鱼和白鲟鱼栖息处）的水。像克拉林顿和布林克利这样的沼泽小城都是黑黢黢的，穷得叮当响。靠着自然旅游业，它们的经济方才一息尚存。在布林克利，理发师会剪一种“象牙喙”发型，让每个人看上去都毫无二致。（译者按：此句中的“one”到底指代什么呢？是“one ivory-billed woodpecker”还是“the same one”，或者是别的？匪夷所思！） The project has some powerful local