For hundreds of millions of years, turtles (海龟) have struggled out of the sea to lay their eggs on sandy beaches, long before there were nature documentaries to celebrate them, or GPS satellites and marine biologists to track them, or volunteers to hand-carry the hatchlings (幼龟) down to the water’s edge lest they become disoriented by headlights and crawl towards a motel parking lot instead.
在数亿年前的时间里，海龟一直在挣扎着离开大海道海滩上产卵，时间远远遭遇自然纪录片的赞扬，或全球定位通讯卫星和海洋生物学家的追踪，又或者志愿者们用手把幼龟放在海边以避免它们受到光线的影响迷失方向，爬向汽车旅馆的停车场。

A formidable wall of bureaucracy has been erected to protect their prime nesting on the Atlantic coastlines.
由官方建造的大型围墙用于保护海龟在大西洋沿岸的主要筑巢地。

With all that attention paid to them, you’d think these creatures would at least have the gratitude not to go extinct.
收到了各种各样的关注后，你可能会认为这些生物至少会心怀感激，不至于走向灭亡。

But Nature is indifferent to human notions of fairness, and a report by the Fish and Wildlife Service showed a worrisome drop in the populations of several species of North Atlantic turtles, notably loggerheads, which can grow to as much as 400 pounds.
但是自然却无视人类的公平观念，由渔业和野生动物服务组织提供的用一份报告显示，北大西洋的数种海龟的种群数量出现了令人担忧的下降，特别是体重可达400磅的红海龟。

 The South Florida nesting population, the largest, has declined by 50% in the last decade, according to Elizabeth Griffin, a marine biologist with the environmental group Oceana.
来自环保组织的Ocean的海洋生物学家伊丽莎白格里芬称，数量最多的佛罗里达州南部穴居种群在过去十年里减少了50%。

The figures prompted Oceana to petition the government to upgrade the level of protection for the North Atlantic loggerheads from “threatened” to “endangered”—meaning they are in danger of disappearing without additional help.
该数据促使Oceana组织向政府情愿，要求将北大西洋红海龟的保护级别从“受威胁”提升至“濒危”-----这意味着如果没有外界的帮助，它们将会面临灭绝的危险。

Which raises the obvious question: what else do these turtles want from us, anyway?
这就提出了一个明显的问题：这些海龟究竟还要我们做什么？

 It turns out, according to Griffin, that while we have done a good job of protecting the turtles for the weeks they spend on land (as egg-laying females, as eggs and as hatchlings), we have neglected the years spend in the ocean. “The threat is from commercial fishing,” says Griffin.
根据格里芬的说法，虽然海龟在陆上的数周时间内，我们可以很好地保护它们（包括产卵的母龟，卵和幼龟），但是我们忽略了它们在海里的漫长时光。“主要是来自商业捕捞的威胁”格里芬说。

Trawlers (which drag large nets through the water and along the ocean floor) and longline fishers (which can deploy thousands of hooks on lines that can stretch for miles) take a heavy toll on turtles.
拖网渔船（在水中和海床拖行大型的渔网）和延绳钓鱼船（在钓线上装备数以千记的鱼钩，可以延伸至数英里）给海龟造成了惨重的伤亡。

Of course, like every other environmental issue today, this is playing out against the background of global warming and human interference with natural ecosystems.
当然，就像所有当下的环保问题一样，这也是在全球变暖和人类干预自然生态系统的背景下发生的。

The narrow strips of beach on which the turtles lay their eggs are being squeezed on one side by development and on the other by the threat of rising sea levels as the oceans warm.
海龟产卵的狭窄沙滩一方面收到开发的压榨，另一方面收到海洋变暖导致的海平面上升的威胁。

Ultimately we must get a handle on those issues as well, or a creature that outlived the dinosaurs (恐龙) will meet its end at the hands of humans, leaving our descendants to wonder how creature so ugly could have won so much affection.
最终我们还要解决这些问题，否则一种比恐龙活得更久的生物将会在人类手中灭绝，让我们的后代困惑于怎么这种丑陋的生物会赢得如此多的关爱。