咸海的回归（一）

世界上有很多内陆湖，如我国的青海湖，西亚的死海，中亚的咸海。为了让中国人了解咸海失而复得的悲壮历史，防止大自然对人类的惩罚的悲剧重演，特翻译了刊登在2006年美国杂志《发现》（Discover）第五期上由记者Eve Conant写的一篇报道，并在前几部分用英汉对照的方法刊出。

遥远的中亚内陆湖咸海的干涸是世界最大的生态顽症之一。如今，在一个八千五百万美金的工程项目的支持下，咸海正在复苏。

生态学家梅拉. 诺克西娃正驾车越过曾经是死海的北岸，一个巨大的内陆湖正横跨卡扎克斯坦与乌兹别克斯坦之间的边界，锈迹斑斑的船只星罗棋布地被遗弃在沙质的海床上。其中有一些被当作废金属清除了，另一些成了性情急躁的大夏骆驼放牧人的住所，其他地方就很少有生命的迹象了。当我们到达伯里斯的克附近的村庄（它曾经俯瞰海湾一角）时，我们发现它的泥墙小屋如今面对着一片带有杀虫剂气味的沙漠，满地是苋类植物和有毒灌木，一直延伸到我们视线所到之处。是的，所有的村民都热情地赞扬这个计划，或者说是水坝，这是一个伟大的水利工程项目的一部分，而诺克西娃是其顾问。十五岁的帕海特. 库曼比托夫用卡扎克语解释着，诺克西娃将他的话翻译过来：“我从未见过海，但现在我坚信海正在归来。”

   The desiccation of a remote inland lake in Central Asia is one of the world’s worst ecological disasters. Now, with an $85 million engineering project, the doomed sea is coming back to life.

Ecologist Maira Nurkisheva is driving over what was once the northern shore of the Aral Sea, a vast inland lake straddling the border between Kazakhstan and Uzhekstan. Rusting abandoned ships dot the sandy seabed. Some have been scavenged for scrap metal; the others provide shade for irritable herds of Bactrian camels. There are few other signs of life. When we reach the nearby village of Birlistik, which used to overlook a bay on the sea, we see that its mud-walled huts now face an insecticide-laced desert, filled with tumbleweeds and toxic shrubs, that is part of the grand waterworks project for which Nurkisheva is a consultant. Fifteen-year-old Parxhat Kutmanbetov explains in Kazakh, and Nurkisheva translates: “I’ve never seen the sea. But now I am sure the sea is coming back.”

如果一切根据计划进行, 那么几年后咸海就能悄悄地回到村庄三英哩之内的范围。一项八千五百万的修复计划将使收缩的海面复原, 整修卡扎克斯坦被毁坏的运河，水闸和渠道系统，其中最为辉煌的是一座长达八英哩的横跨咸海北部中央的水坝。在世界银行和富有的产油国哈萨克政府之间的合作努力下，人们打算扭转使世界最大的内地水体枯竭的几十年的干枯倾向。

If all goes as planned, within a few years the Aral See could creep back to within three miles of the village. Revival of the shrunken sea hinges on an $85 million renovation of Kazakhstan’s dilapidated system of river canals, sluices and channels, culminating in an eight-mile dam across the middle of the northern part of the sea. The effort, a collaboration between the World Bank and oil-rich Kazakh government aims to reverse the decades of desiccation that have shriveled one of the world’s biggest inland bodies of water.

（待续）

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