姚明能夠讓中國人放過非洲象牙嗎

In China, when Yao Ming speaks, people listen. Trading on this former basketball superstar’s towering stature in his home country, WildAid has named Mr. Yao a spokesman on behalf of Africa’s severely threatened elephant and rhino populations to help curb China’s multi-billion-dollar lust for illegal wildlife products.

在中國，姚明講話的時候，人們都聽。野生救援協會(WildAid)利用這位前籃球超級明星在自己祖國的崇高威望，任命他擔任非洲瀕危大象和犀牛的代言人，幫助遏制中國億萬富翁對非法野生動物製品的貪求。

“Saving Africa’s Giants With Yao Ming,” Tuesday on Animal Planet, follows Mr. Yao to the Samburu National Reserve in Kenya and the Kariega Game Reserve in South Africa to witness the brutality inflicted by poachers upon these creatures. Some of the images are heartbreakingly graphic. So are the statistics, about the six northern white rhinos left in the world (the seventh died last month), their horns believed by some cultures to contain medicinal properties, or the more than 20,000 African elephants killed in 2013 for ivory to be carved into trinkets. With a demand that exceeds the number of animals remaining, “it’s a race against time to get people to care sufficiently,” says Iain Douglas-Hamilton, the founder and chief executive of Save the Elephants. Or, as Mr. Yao says in a public-service spot, “When the buying stops, the killing can, too.”

週二，《動物星球》(Animal Planet)頻道播放的《和姚明一起拯救非洲巨獸》(Saving Africa’s Giants With Yao Ming)跟隨姚明到肯尼亞的桑布魯國家自然保護區和南非的卡里埃加野生動物保護區，見證偷獵者對這些動物的暴行。有些畫面生動得令人心碎。片中的數據也令人震驚，世界上只剩下六隻北方白犀牛（第七隻上個月死了），有些文化認爲它們的角具有藥用價值；2013年，兩萬多隻非洲大象被殺害，它們的象牙被雕刻成小飾品。目前的需求量超過倖存動物的數量。拯救大象組織(Save the Elephants)的創始人、首席執行官伊恩·道格拉斯-漢密爾頓(Iain Douglas-Hamilton)說，“我們是在和時間競賽，要讓人們足夠關愛。”或者，正如姚明在一個公益廣告中說的，“沒有買賣，就沒有殺害。”