When the Poacher Is a Scientist

生物剽窃？ 当盗猎者是名科学家…

文/RachelNuwer

译/陈韦廷

In February, the Journal of the British TarantulaSociety published a paper describing a new species of tarantula, which wasdiscovered in a national park in Sarawak, Malaysia. While the male of thespecies was an unremarkable brown, the female had eye-catching, electric bluelegs.

今年二月，《英国蜘蛛学会期刊》发表一篇论文，描述在马来西亚砂劳越国家公园发现一个新狼蛛物种。虽然雄狼蛛颜色是平淡无奇的棕色，雌狼蛛却有引人注目的电光蓝色的腿。

New spiders are discovered all the time, and thepaper likely would have gone largely unnoticed — were it not for an article inScience magazine that appeared soon afterward.

一直有新蜘蛛被发现，若不是另一篇文章紧接着在《科学》杂志上刊出，前述论文很可能乏人注意。

The article claimed that the tarantula researchershad received their specimens secondhand from private collectors in Poland andBritain, who had poached them in Malaysia.

《科学》杂志那篇文章声称，狼蛛研究人员从波兰与英国的私人收藏家那里取得二手标本，而标本是这些收藏家在马来西亚盗猎的。

Neither Ray Gabriel nor Danniella Sherwood, theauthors of the study, responded to email requests for comment. But Peter Kirk,chairman of the British Tarantula Society and editor of the society’s journal,said the collectors had shown the scientists an import permit from Poland, andthey “had no reason to think due process wasn’t followed.”

研究报告的作者是雷．盖布里尔和丹尼拉．薛伍德，两人均未回复要求评论的电子邮件，但英国蜘蛛学会主席兼该学会期刊主编彼得．柯克表示，收藏家有向科学家们展示波兰的进口许可证，所以他们「没理由认为有违正当程序」。

“Thepaper absolutely will not be retracted, because it’s a completely legitimatepublished paper,” he said.

他说：「这篇论文绝对不会撤回，因为它是一篇完全合法发表的论文。」

The incident has reignited a decades-old debateamong scientists and hobbyists alike about research ethics, specimen collectionand “biopiracy” — the use of natural resources without obtaining permissionfrom local communities or sharing any benefits with them.

这起事件再次在科学家跟业余爱好者圈内引发长达数十年、有关研究伦理、标本收集及「生物剽窃」的争论，而生物剽窃指的是未经当地小区许可，或与其分享任何利益而使用自然资源。

“Themajority of responses I’ve seen are people saying, ‘Yes, we need to stop this,’but there’s also been a fair amount of people basically trying to justify thepoaching and smuggling of these tarantulas,” said Ernest Cooper, a conservationconsultant in British Columbia.

加拿大卑诗省保育顾问恩斯特．库柏说：「我看过的大多数人都说『是的，我们需要阻止这种事』，但也有不少人基本上试图把盗猎与走私这些狼蛛合理化。」

“It’sthis very strange, slightly colonial attitude of, ‘We know better thandeveloping countries, so their laws don’t matter.’”

「这是种非常奇怪、略带殖民主义色彩的态度：『我们知道的比发展中国家多，所以他们的法律不重要』。」

Illegal wildlife trade is dominated by headlinesabout criminal cartels trafficking in ivory, rhino horn and pangolin scales.But scientists can also be complicit in illegal trade by poaching specimensthemselves or by working with those who do.

有关非法野生动物贸易的报导，几乎全集中在犯罪集团贩卖象牙、犀牛角与穿山甲的麟片，但科学家也能透过自己盗猎标本或是跟盗猎者合作而参与非法贸易。

This type of wildlife crime occurs on a muchsmaller scale, but experts in a variety of fields believe it is a significantissue.

这类有关野生动物的犯罪行为规模虽然小得多，但诸多领域的专家都认为是个重大问题。

“It’sa problem globally, and it happens a lot,” said Sérgio Henriques, chairman ofthe spider and scorpion group at the International Union for Conservation ofNature.

国际自然保育联盟蜘蛛与蝎子专家组主席塞吉欧．亨利克斯说：「这是项全球性问题，而且经常发生。」

For Henriques and others, this sort of collectionraises deep ethical concerns. “We’re the scientists, the ones who are supposedto know better and who should be leading by example,” he said. “If we can’tfollow the rules, why are we demanding that others do?”

对于亨利克斯这些人来说，这类收藏引起了高度道德忧虑。他说：「我们是科学家，理应更明白且以身作则。要是我们自己不遵守规则，又为何要求别人这样做呢？」