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Los Angeles seems like a surprising home for a large wildlife predator.
对大型野生动物捕食者而言，洛杉矶似乎是一个令人惊叹的家园。
In fact, LA is one of only two mega cities in the world to have big cats living within the city limits.
事实上，洛杉矶是世界上仅有的两个拥有大型猫科动物的特大城市之一。
In LA, the freeways have sliced the mountain lion's habitat into ever-shrinking pieces.
在洛杉矶，高速公路已经把山狮的栖息地分割成越来越小的一部分。
And this isolates the populations from each other and causes problems with genetic diversity.
这使得种群相互隔离，导致了遗传多样性的问题。
All leading to a risk of local extinction in as few as 12 years.
所有这些都会在短短的12年内带来局部灭绝的风险。
But there's hope in saving them by re-linking these lonely lions, even one at a time.
但是，通过重新连结这些孤独的狮子，即使一次一只，拯救它们也还是有希望的。
If one individual could come across every two or three years, then the genetic makeup of the population would stay fairly stable.
如果每两到三年就有一个个体出现，那么种群的基因组成将保持稳定。
Seriously, it only takes the introduction of one new mountain lion to renew genetic health for the local species.
只需要引进一只新的山狮就可以恢复当地物种的遗传健康。
But before we get into that, let's explore how mountain lions got into this situation, or more specifically, how we forced them into this situation in the first place.
但在这之前，让我们先来探讨一下山狮是如何陷入这种境地的，或者更具体地说，我们是如何一开始就逼迫它们陷入这种境地的。
Mountain lions live in a variety of habitats in Southern California.
山狮在南加州有许多栖息地。
So they are sort of everywhere that there is cover, habitat and deer.
有草皮、栖息地和鹿的地方就有山狮的踪迹。
We tend to attract some wildlife because of our lawns and our watered areas and our golf courses and things like that.
我们会吸引一些野生动物，因为我们有草坪、水域、还有高尔夫球场之类的。
So mountain lions oftentimes live much closer to people than we think.
因此，山狮与人类的距离通常比我们想象的更近。
At the lower elevations and the passes and things where highways, have been built, the freeways carve the area up, and they make it such that the animals can't reach from one area to another very easily at all.
在海拔较低的地方，在那些建有公路的地方，高速公路把这片区域分割开来，它们使得动物们无法轻易地从一个地区到达另一个地区。
Either get killed trying to cross, or the highway itself is so noisy, and there's so much light relating to cars that they just can't, they don't want to try it.
要么是在试图横穿马路时被杀，要么是公路本身太吵了，而且汽车会发光，他们不想试着过去。
So, although there are quite a few mountain lions living in the Southern California mountain ranges,
所以，尽管南加州的山脉里生活着不少山狮，
and they've been there for thousands of years, the highways are now forcing individual mountain lions to stay where they are, without roaming to new areas as they naturally would.
而且它们已经在那里生活了几千年，但如今的公路迫使个别山狮留在原地，而不是像它们自然会去的那样漫步到新的地区。
They tend to become inbred, they tend to keep breeding with each other, they don't have new animals coming in to introduce new genetics and so that inbreeding phenomenon,
它们倾向于近亲繁殖、两两交配，没有新的动物来引入新的基因，因此造成了近亲繁殖的现象，
then leads to potentially health problems and susceptibility to disease, reproductive issues.
然后导致潜在的健康问题和易感疾病与生殖问题。
Then the population could go extinct or, in the models, actually did go extinct within that 12 or 13 year period.
然后，种群可能会灭绝。在模型中，它们确实在12年或13年内灭绝。
So, it can happen quickly if reproduction rates can't keep up with mortality rates.
所以，如果繁殖率跟不上死亡率，这就会很快发生。
Unfortunately, Dr.Vickers has seen this before.
不幸的是，维克斯医生以前见过这一情景。
The only mountain lion population we have as an example of what happens with inbreeding is the the Florida Panther, and it was isolated and is isolated in the Everglades and southern Florida.
山狮近亲繁殖的唯一一个例子就是佛罗里达豹，它在大沼泽地和佛罗里达南部与外界隔绝。
And when its population became low because of all of these same factors, and by low I mean less than 20 individuals in the entire state, they also were tending to just breed with each other.
当其数量因所有这些因素而变少时，我指的是整个州不到20只，它们也倾向于两两繁殖。
They also started having physical abnormalities changes in their haircoats, kinked tails were one thing that they saw.
它们的身体也开始有异常的变化：毛发变化与扭结的尾巴是可见的。
Cleft palates, physical abnormalities that began to show up because of inbreeding.
腭裂等现象是由于近亲繁殖而开始出现的生理异常。
Female mouth lions were brought in from Texas to breed with that population, and that was a successful introduction of genetic material,
雌性口狮是从德克萨斯州引进与该种群一起繁殖的，这是遗传物质的成功引进，
and the kitten survival went up, and overall survival went up, and the population has now expanded to between one and 200 animals.
它的存活率提高了，总体存活率也提高了，现在的数量已经扩大到1到200只。
