澳大利亚应该多吃袋鼠

你会吃袋鼠吗？有澳大利亚生态学家希望如此。他们表示，澳大利亚的袋鼠数量过多，应该加以控制。还有比把它做成美食更好的方式吗？

据BBC新闻报道，目前澳大利亚袋鼠的数量接近人口的两倍，正在破坏澳大利亚的生态系统。这种有袋动物的数量激增，从2010年的2,700万只到2016年增加到4,500万只，主要原因是澳大利亚十多年的湿润气候导致植被茂盛，解决了袋鼠的食物问题。另外一个原因是人类消灭了袋鼠的天敌。

如果放任不管，袋鼠可能会吃光澳大利亚的本土植物，使鸟类等其他动物找不到食物或栖息地。一些地区因为袋鼠大量啃食草地，已经出现了水土流失问题。随着数量的增加，袋鼠也可能面临食物不足的问题，可能出现被饿死的情况。

生态学家认为解决这个问题的方法是让人类多吃袋鼠肉，但这个建议很难让人接受。袋鼠是澳大利亚的国家象征，虽然游客经常会食用袋鼠肉，但本地人几乎从不吃袋鼠。或许他们应该改变心态：袋鼠肉的脂肪含量较低，而且袋鼠排出的甲烷远少于其他更传统的家畜。（财富中文网）

译者：刘进龙/汪皓

Would you eat a kangaroo? Some Australian ecologists hope so. They say that the country is facing an overabundance of the animal and that the kangaroo population needs to be cut down. And what better way to do that than to have one for dinner?

According to BBC News, there are currently almost twice as many kangaroos as people in Australia, which is destroying the country’s ecosystem. The sharp increase in the marsupial’s population, which has grown from 27 million in 2010 to 45 million in 2016, is due in part to a decade of wet conditions in the country that allowed vegetation to flourish, and kangaroos to have no trouble finding food. Humans have also gotten rid of many of the kangaroo’s natural predators in the country.

If left on their own, kangaroos will potentially wipe out native plants and prevent other animals, such as birds, from being able to find food or shelter. Areas where kangaroos have aggressively eaten the grass are also faced with erosion issues. As the population increases, the animals are also facing a real possibility of running out of food, and potentially starving to death.

Ecologists see the solution is having people eat more kangaroos, but it’s a tough sell. The kangaroo is a national symbol in Australia, and while the animal is often eaten by tourists, locals don't dine on the animal nearly as often. But perhaps they should: Kangaroo meat is low in fat, and the animal produces less methane than other more traditional farm animals.